Forrest Parry

Parry was born in Cedar City, Utah to Edward H. Parry and Marguerite C. Parry. Forrest attended the Branch Agricultural College (BAC) now Southern Utah University, in Cedar City before entering the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, Md, in 1942. He graduated from the Naval Academy in June 1945.{{cn|date=August 2024}}

When the Korean War began in 1950, Parry served on the USS Walke as First Lieutenant and Damage Control Officer. After the Walke was hit by a torpedo or floating mine which killed 26 sailors and wounded 40, Parry was awarded a Bronze Star with Valor.{{cn|date=August 2024}}

After leaving the Navy in 1952, Parry went to work at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and married Dorothea Tillia. They raised five children. Parry left Livermore in 1954 to work for Dow Chemical and then at Unette Corporation, a small plastic packaging firm.

In May 1957, Parry began his 30-year career with IBM, mostly in Rochester, Minnesota. While at IBM, he developed devices and systems for high-speed printers, optical character readers, Universal Product Code (UPC) checkout systems, and an Advanced Optical Character Reader (AOCR) which reads addresses from mailed letters and reprints it as bar codes for easy resorting at smaller post offices that have simpler and cheaper sorting machines.

In 1960, while at IBM, Parry invented the magnetic stripe card for use by the U.S. Government.{{cite web|title=Alumni Chapter Updates (archived)|url=http://www.suu.edu/alumni/magazine/fall04/pdf/news.pdf|publisher=SUU|access-date=13 September 2017|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160303233616/http://www.suu.edu/alumni/magazine/fall04/pdf/news.pdf|archive-date=3 March 2016}} He had the idea of gluing short pieces of magnetic tape to each plastic card, but the glue warped the tape, making it unusable. When he returned home, Parry's wife Dorothea was using a flat iron to iron clothes. When he explained his inability to get the tape to "stick" to the plastic in a way that would work, she suggested that he use the iron to melt the stripe onto the card. He tried it and it worked.{{cite web|url=http://www.ibm.com/ibm100/us/en/icons/magnetic/|title=IBM100 - Click on "View all icons". Click on 8th row from the bottom titled "Magnetic Stripe Technology"|website=IBM |date=2011-02-03|access-date=2011-02-03}}{{cite web |url=http://www.suu.edu/alumni/magazine/fall04/pdf/news.pdf |title=Article on Forrest Parry, pages 3-4 |access-date=2011-11-29 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111027061240/http://www.suu.edu/alumni/magazine/fall04/pdf/news.pdf |archive-date=2011-10-27 }} The heat of the iron was just high enough to bond the tape to the card. Magnetic stripes are used on credit cards, debit cards, gift cards, stored-value cards, hotel keycards, and security identification badges, though they are being phased out in favor of other means of digital identification, such as QR codes and NFC chips and apps.{{cite web|url=https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c51yd4j4lnvo|date=15 August 2024|access-date=27 August 2024|website=BBC|title=Is this the end for the magnetic stripe?|last=Baraniuk|first=Chris}}

• F. C. Parry, IBM Technical Disclosure Bulletin, "Identification Card", Vol. 3, No. 6, November 6, 1960, page 8

• Credit card
• Magnetic stripe card
• Access badge

• [https://web.archive.org/web/20090201142341/http://www.merchantglossary.com/glossary/m/magnetic-stripe-reading-terminal Merchant Glossary]
• [http://cedarcityreview.com Forrest Corry Parry Obituary in Cedar City Review, Vol. 1, No. 33, February 2, 2006]

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Category:1921 births

Category:2005 deaths

Category:20th-century American inventors

Category:United States Navy personnel of the Korean War

Category:Dow Chemical Company employees

Category:IBM employees

Category:People from Cedar City, Utah

Category:Southern Utah University alumni

Category:United States Naval Academy alumni