Do you know him?

You’ve seen his name a gazillion times. You just can’t place it.

Here’s a hint: I can almost guarantee you have thrown out junk mail with his name on it this year.

Charles F. Frost, or C.F. Frost, was an ad executive at Ogilvy & Mather in the 1950s. One of the firm’s clients was American Express, and it was getting ready to roll out a new product. But it didn’t want to use a random name because it was afraid of lawsuits.

So they put Frost’s name on the new product: the credit card. His name has appeared in just about every prototype of an American Express card since its introduction in 1958.

Whoa, young’uns! I know what you’re thinking. 1958?

Here’s something that might seem shocking: credit cards were virtually non-existent in 1954.

The only credit card was Diner’s Club, formed in 1950 after some businessman forgot his wallet when dining with clients and was forced to call his wife to bring it from home. But its uses in 1954 were still limited to restaurants, mostly in New York.

American Express, which was a financial services company specializing in freight shipments and foreign exchange, had been looking to get into the credit business since just after World War II. Once Diner’s Club was established, it provided the impetus to go big.

The first American Express card was, well, a card. Made of paper. You know that assortment of plastic in your wallet or purse? Not until 1959 did AmEx become the first company to issue embossed plastic cards. It was more of a charge card than a credit card – you were expected to pay the balance when the bill came monthly.

American Express charged what was considered a steep fee for its card, $6 a year. But it carried a certain caché to flash the card at a restaurant or hotel. It was a big deal in our house when my Dad got his Amex Card in 1968.

The nation’s banks were slower to get to the market. In the ’60s, they formed two alliances – BankAmericard, named for alliance leader Bank of America, and Intercard, also known as Master Charge. Their names evolved to Visa and Mastercard.

People snapped up the cards. Banks were part of both alliances and soon were the backers of the cards issued by individual retailers and service providers. And they made fortunes on the interest they charged when they allowed people to pay a minimum of their balance each month.

That’s not an unmitigated good. Many Americans forget that the card only means you’ll pay for whatever eventually. They rack up thousands of dollars in debt that becomes very difficult to repay.

In the 1970s, banks began issuing debit cards, a different kind of plastic that deducted funds from checking accounts. And debit cards led to another thing that seems as if it has been around forever: the automated teller machine, or ATM.

The idea that you can get cash from a machine at 3:22 a.m. on Sunday is another thing that might have been beyond the wildest dreams of people in 1954.

Most of us have at least two go-to credit cards to handle expenses. In fact, there are more and more places where they don’t allow cash transactions – if you want to get a hot dog at a Met game, you need a credit or debit card.

Don’t leave home without it.