A keycard lock is a lock operated by a keycard, a flat, rectangular plastic card with identical dimensions to that of a credit card or American and EU driver's license which stores a physical or digital signature which the door mechanism accepts before disengaging the lock.
There are several popular type of keycards in use including the mechanical holecard, bar code, magnetic stripe, Wiegand wire embedded cards, smart card (embedded with a read/write electronic microchip), and RFID proximity cards.
Keycards are frequently used in hotels as an alternative to mechanical keys.
The first commercial use of key cards was at automated parking lots to raise and lower the gate where users paid a monthly fee.
Famous quotes containing the word lock:
“Time, which shows so vacant, indivisible, and divine in its coming, is slit and peddled into trifles and tatters. A door is to be painted, a lock to be repaired. I want wood, or oil, or meal, or salt; the house smokes, or I have a headache; then the tax; and an affair to be transacted with a man without heart or brains; and the stinging recollection of an injurious or very awkward word,—these eat up the hours.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)