The Industry's First Solid Barium Ferrite Access Card
The inventor of the magnetic card  reader came to us in 1970 to develop an access card that it could read. We did, and it became Card Key's main product for the next 20 years.

The First RF Proximity Access Card
We developed the first RF proximity cards for Proximity Devices, Inc. in 1971, and that company went on to become Schlage Electronics.

Differential Optics Reader Technology
We invented and patented the worlds' first solid state electronic card reader in 1972. When the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Test Lab ranked it #1 as the highest security card and reader ever developed, Johnson Controls made it the one and only technology it would offer with its flagship JC/80 security system. Thousands were sold world-wide.

Our technology was soon discovered by France's largest (7,000 employees) security company, Fichet-Bauche.  Fichet purchased an exclusive license from us in 1973 and became Europe's first access control systems manufacturer. We collaborated with them annually at their factory in Paris for the next 20 years.

The First Stand-Alone Card Reader With An Individual Card Memory
This is the intelligent card reader Automatic Parking DevicesInc, used to revolutionize the parking business. It meant the end to quarterly parking card replacements. When a cardholder didn't pay, or lost the card, it could be deleted from memory. We introduced this reader to the industry in 1973, and thousands were sold.

The World's First "PC" Based Security System
When Radio Shack introduced the first mass produced Personal Computer in 1980, we speculated that this would quickly become the standard for the future. We developed the worlds' first security system based on a personal computer, and the first system was sold to the Coca Cola Bottling Company's World Headquarters in Atlanta in April of 1981. Federal APD went on to market our Radio Shack TRS-80 system making it the parking industry's first "PC" based system.

The "PC" Smart Cartridge
We put the Personal Computer in a box that would fit in the palm of your hand, bringing high end PC level functionality to one or more remote stand-alone readers. Verizon (formerly GTE) is one customer that has more than 600 remote buildings using a Smart Cartridge to control security. A central software program can call them automatically to make card programming changes.

Microsoft Access, Open Architecture and Open Source
With an industry now tired of battling obsolescence, and expensive proprietary software, we introduced the first fully open system using the off-the-shelf version of the world's most popular data management system; We named it Access Central.

This is the venerable Radio Shack TRS-80 Computer One of the first true personal computers We used it to introduce the industry's first "PC" based system