the United Kingdom ITR (a subsidiary of IBM United Kingdom Ltd.) was the subject of a management buy-out in 1963 and reverted to International Time Recorders. In 1982, International Time Recorders was acquired by Blick Industries of Swindon, England, who were themselves later absorbed by Stanley Security Systems. The first punched-card system to be linked to a Z80 microprocessor was developed by Kronos Incorporated in the late 1970s and introduced as a product in 1979. Late 20th century In the late 20th century, time clocks started to move away from the mechanical machines to computer-based, electronic time and attendance systems. The employee registers with the system by swiping a magnetic stripe card, scanning a barcode, bringing an RFID (radio-frequency identification) tag close to a reader, entering a number or using a biometric reader. These systems are much more advanced than the mechanical time clock: various reports can be generated, including on compliance with the European Working Time Directive, and a Bradford factor report. Employees can also use the system to request holidays, enter absence requests and view their worked hours. User interfaces can be personalized and offer robust self-service capabilities. Electronic time clock machines are manufactured in many designs by companies in China and sold under various brand names in places around the world, with accompanying software to extract the data from a single time clock machine, or several machines, and process the data into reports. In most cases local suppliers offer technical support and in some cases installation services. More recently, time clocks have started to adopt technology commonly seen in phones and tablets – called 'Smartclocks'. The "state of the art" smartclocks come with multi-touch screens, full color displays, real time monitoring for problems, wireless networking and over the air updates. Some of the smartclocks use front-facing cameras to capture employee clock-ins to deter "buddy clocking" or "buddy punching", whereby one employee fraudulently records the time of another. This problem usually requires expensive biometric devices. With the increasing popularity of cloud-based software, some of the newer time clocks are built to work seamlessly with the cloud. Types Basic time clock A basic time clock will just stamp the date and time on a time card, similar to a parking validation machine. These will usually be activated by a button that a worker must press to stamp their card, or stamp upon full insertion. Some machines use punch hole