Term of the Moment
daisy wheel
Definition: UltraCard
A smart card storage technology from the former UltraCard, Inc., Los Gatos, CA, that used a magnetic-coated strip of metal (a "shim") that was drawn almost entirely out of the card by the drive, read and written and inserted back in. Introduced in 1999, it provided 5MB of storage, greatly exceeding the capacity in smart card chips at that time and added biometric security. UltraCards used any combination of shim, magnetic stripe or contact-based or contactless smart card chip. See smart card.
The UltraCard
This illustration shows the shim extended as if it had been extracted by the drive for reading and writing. Note the smart card contacts. (Image courtesy of UltraCard, Inc.)