Keys, bank cards, and PIN numbers may go the way of the slide rule if John Daugman has anything to say about it. Daugman, a computer scientist at Cambridge University, has developed an identification system familiar to anyone who has ever watched a science fiction or spy movie--a device that scans and recognizes the unique patterns in the iris, the colored part of a person's eye. In preliminary tests of the system this past year, some bank customers in Britain were able to access automatic teller machines by just glancing at a camera.
The iris, which controls the amount of light that enters the pupil, consists of two muscles and bunches of elastic fibers--"like a plate of sticky noodles," says Daugman. These fibers congeal into a random arrangement in the iris before a person is born.
Daugman's camera uses infrared light to image the iris and then creates a digital code based on the iris's fiber pattern. (The technique, says Daugman, is not to be confused with retinal scanning, which looks at blood vessel patterns in the back of the eye and requires a person to put his eye right up to a camera. With this device, the camera can be as much as three feet away.)
