A negative charge

Press, 22 June 1989, Page 15

A negative charge

Irate plastic-money users in the United States have been blaming electric eel-skin wallets and handbags for scrambling the coded magnetic strips on charge cards. But current thinking among researchers is that the eel is innocent, writes Arndi Spicer in the “Observer.” The skin is not, in fact, taken from the electric eel, but from the hagfish, a totally non-elec-tric animal. Caught off the coast of Korea, they are imported into the United States as a chic substitute for leather. After analysis by Californiabased Pacific Test Engineering, the skin was found to be cleaner than normal leather,

and a good insulator. According to Pacific’s electrical engineer, Keith Moran, the answer to the scrambled cards may be much simpler — magnetic clasps on the bags.

Putting your wallet down on televisions, hi-fi loud-speakers or electronic cash registers, all of which have strong electromagnetic fields, could have the same effect, he says.

But the most usual cause is running a magnet directly over the strip, or keeping two cards with the magnetic strips touching each other. This would corrupt the data encoded on the card.