Background
Parry was born in Cedar City, Utah to Edward H. Parry and Marguerite C. Parry.
Parry was born in Cedar City, Utah to Edward H. Parry and Marguerite C. Parry.
Forrest attended the Branch Agricultural College (Baccalaureate) now Southern Utah University, in Cedar City before entering the United States. Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland, in 1942. He graduated from the Naval Academy in June 1945.
When the Korean War began in 1950, Parry served on the United States Ship 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. 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 International Business Machines Corporation, mostly in Rochester, Minnesota. While at International Business Machines Corporation, he developed devices and systems for high-speed printers, optical character readers, Universal Product Code (Universal Product Code) 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 International Business Machines Corporation, Parry invented the magnetic stripe card for use by the United States. Government. 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. The heat of the iron was just high enough to bond the tape to the card.
Magnetic stripes are now used on cr cards, debit cards, gift cards, stored-value cards, hotel keycards, and security identification badges.
After Parry retired from International Business Machines Corporation in 1987, he and Louisiana Faun lived in Saint George, Utah until her death in 1996 and Parry"s death in 2005.