Jewish Invention Myths: The Smart Card
Let’s look at yet another jewish invention myth.
This time let’s take the claim that jews invented the ‘Smart Card’ which is the basis for the modern bank and security access cards as well as sim cards in mobile/cell phones.
The claim is that an Egyptian jew named Roland Moreno was the person who invented it as ‘MNews’ makes abundantly clear:
‘Roland Moreno – Smart cards
Roland Moreno is a businessman and engineer best known as the inventor of the smart card, an electronic memory chip used in credit cards and mobile phone SIM cards.’ (1)
This is complete nonsense however since the first smart card was invented by German rocket engineer Helmut Gröttrup who applied for German patents for plastic cards fitted with a tamper-proof integrated circuit chips as a security/identification device in February 1967. (2)
Both these patents were subsequently granted in 1969 and then also accepted by Austria, the United States, the United Kingdom and most other Western countries. (3)
Kunitaka Arimura of the Arimura Technology Institute in Japan independently came up with the same concept in 1970 and filed a smart card patent in Japan in that year (4) and is also sometimes listed as the inventor of the smart card, (5) but this is incorrect although Arimura can be awarded co-priority with Gröttrup because he independently came up with the same concept.
Furthermore, the American electrical engineer Paul Castrucci of IBM patented another version of the smart card idea in May 1971 under the name ‘Information Card’. (6)
Roland Moreno’s ‘smart card’ of 1974 is merely an improvement on these earlier inventions and Gröttrup himself took Moreno’s improvement on his, Arimura and Castrucci’s ideas and then improved it further in 1976 rendering Moreno’s improvement redundant. (7)
Moreno simply doesn’t deserve any credit for ‘inventing’ the smart card because he simply didn’t and the only reason, he appears to have been credited by some for doing so is that he came up with a whole dramatic backstory about ‘how he had a dream’ and that led to this ground-breaking invention. (8)
Heck even pro-Moreno sources don’t list Moreno as the first person to invent the smart card! (9)
The reality is that Moreno only really invented the name ‘smart card’; he didn’t actually invent the smart card itself.
Helmut Gröttrup and Kunitaka Arimura did.
References
(1) https://mnews.world/en/news/the-great-jews-and-their-inventions
(2) https://worldwide.espacenet.com/patent/search/family/007128903/publication/DE1574074A1?q=pn%3DDE1574074 and https://worldwide.espacenet.com/patent/search/family/007128904/publication/DE1574075A1?q=pn%3DDE1574075
(3) https://www.dpma.de/docs/postergalerieneu/34_chipkarte.pdf
(4) Zhiqun Chen, 2000, ‘Java Card Technology for Smart Cards: Architecture and Programmer's Guide’, 1st Edition, Addison-Wesley: Boston, pp. 3-4
(5) https://web.archive.org/web/20130425054528/http://www.cardwerk.com/smartcards/smartcard_history.aspx
(6) Timothy Jurgensen, Scott Guthery, ‘Smart Cards: The Developer’s Toolkit’, 1st Edition, Prentice Hall PTR: Upper Saddle River, pp. 2-3
(7) http://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/originalDocument?FT=D&date=19780808&DB=EPODOC&locale=en_EP&CC=US&NR=4105156A&KC=A&ND=4
(8) https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/roland-moreno-inventor-who-missed-out-on-global-recognition-for-his-computer-chip-smart-card-7715617.html
(9) https://web.archive.org/web/20130425054528/http://www.cardwerk.com/smartcards/smartcard_history.aspx