Roland Moreno

Roland Moreno (11 June 1945 – 29 April 2012) was a French inventor, engineer, humorist and author who was the inventor of the smart card. Created in 1974, his invention has "Touched almost everyone on the planet" in the words of The Guardian and is now used in identity cards, drivers licenses, passports, oyster cards and SIM cards. Moreno's smart card, or la carte à puce in French, was little known internationally. However, he became a national hero in France and was awarded the Légion d'Honneur in 2009.

Moreno was born in Cairo, Egypt, to Egyptian Jewish parents on 11 June 1945. His original last name was Bahbout, but the family changed their surname to Moreno when they moved to France when he was very young. He attended the Montaigne and Condorcet schools in Paris, but dropped out early, and described his education as "self taught" for the rest of his life. Moreno worked in several smaller jobs after leaving school. He worked as a young reporter for Détective Magazine and a runner for the L'Express news magazine. From 1970 to 1972 Moreno was also an editor at Chimie-Actualités, a French chemistry magazine.

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