* Alfred Zipf; Father of Electronic Banking

Alfred Zipf, 82, Bank of America executive considered the father of electronic banking. In a four-decade career with the bank, Zipf rose from a Los Angeles transit clerk sorting checks by hand in 1935 to senior administrative officer in charge of the California branch operation and computer system in 1976. As head of the bank’s department of equipment research in the early 1950s, Zipf conceived, installed and directed the first large-scale, general-purpose computing system in the banking industry. Working with the Stanford Research Institute, he also led the team that developed magnetic ink character recognition to encode and read data--the small numbers on the bottom of printed checks. He also developed his bank’s Electronic Recording Machine Accounting, nicknamed Erma, to read the little numbers, reducing check processing time by 80%. Erma, which was supplanted by newer machines, is now displayed in the National Museum of American History. The magnetic ink character recognition system, which was called Zipf’s “gift to banks” by Bankers Clearing House Executive Director Gerard F. Milano, enabled the industry to process growing numbers of checks--from 8 billion annually in 1952 to 65 billion a year now. Zipf held several patents on banking equipment, including an “automatic receiving teller,” a forerunner of the modern ATM. Zipf earned the Gold Key from the Banking Administration Institute, and in 1992 Bank of America named its technology center in Concord, Calif., the Al Zipf Building. President Richard Nixon named the banker to the National Commission on Libraries and Information Services in 1971. On Jan. 1 in Oroville, Calif.