That Beeping You Hear Is Your Wallet

As if to prove that no item can’t be improved with a microchip, a Westlake Village aerospace engineer has invented a wallet that uses a chip to beep when credit cards are removed.

The Beeping Wallet is intended to help people who forget their credit cards at store counters, like the wife of inventor David Kopel. The wallet beeps when a card is removed, then beeps in 20-second intervals until the card is returned.

Kopel, a veteran of Litton Industries and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said he began designing the wallet eight years ago. An early version relied on a light sensor, but it didn’t work in dark places.

In the new design, the insides of a Beeping Wallet’s pockets are silk-screened with a conductive silver material. When the silk-screened surfaces touch each other--such as when a credit card is removed--the material sends a signal to a microchip.

Then the chip sends a signal to an accompanying watch battery, which does the beeping. When the credit card is returned to the pocket, the surfaces are separated again and the beeping stops.

The new wallets ($20 to $40) are at selected stores, in the SkyMall airline catalog and on the Web.