Word: bursar
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...Jerrold Gibson '51, those bursar's cards mean big business, and that little black stripe holds the promise of saving Harvard thousands of dollars...
...bursar's card merry-go-round began to revolve in September 1974, when the University unveiled its all-new bursar's card with the machine-detectable identification stripe. A brouhaha arose immediately over the use of Polaroid Corporation cards, which are used to make identification passes in South Africa. Gibson said at the time that Polaroid had been chosen because no other companies could make a card that would accept encoding...
After the Polaroid mini-controversy quieted down, the bursar's card fell out of the limelight, and no one publicly noted or mourned the passing of I.D. card encoding early in 1975. The key to this move was Widener Library's decision to drop a proposed automation of its circulation system...
Nonetheless, Gibson is holding tight to his hopes to eventually introduce an extensive, computerized system of bursar's card readers in dining halls, libraries, the University Health Services, and other Harvard facilities. He believes such a system would cut the costs of being a student here by eliminating illegitimate use of costly services...
Hall says not that although the idea for the machines--which would encode student hand-prints in magnetic tape on bursar cards--came out of his office, he takes no direct credit for them. But at the time he said he thought the installation of such a machine would be reasonable in light of the money that it would save...