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History of the Automatic Teller
XopherMV writes "The line was long and slow, and he became increasingly irritated as his lunch hour dribbled away. All at once, he had a flash of inspiration. 'Golly, all the teller does is cash checks, take deposits, answer questions like "What's my balance?" and transfer money between accounts,' recalls Wetzel, now 75 and still living in Dallas with his wife. 'Wow, I think we could build a machine that could do that!' And with a $4 million go-ahead from Docutel's parent company, that's exactly what he and his engineers did. Read more about the story of the ATM."
What is the history of the first post?
There is even one, for some reason, at the McMurdo Station on Antarctica.
I would hate to be the armored truck driver responsible for keeping that one filled.
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
Just submit a story with an incredibly tedious subject and containing almost no technical information at all.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Je n'ai pas d'avenir Je n'ai qu'un destin Celui de n'être qu'un souvenir C'est pour demain
Think of all the people that invention has helped out in a bind...
Politicians when they need money for their hookers, no more personal checks.
When all those dirty old men run out of money at the strip club they can hit the atm
And, me when I need bar money late at night (I won't take a credit card cause then there goes the bank)
Evolution or ID?
After the technology had earned the trust of once highly skeptical customers, an amazing transformation began to take place: Face-to-face business became face-to-interface, and it changed the way people consumed.
Ironically, the same thing happened with sex around the same time.
Oh no... an entire article with thousands of threads dedicated to calling them ATM Machines. My nitpikc nerves are ready and waiting to have their seizure.
"The line was long and slow, and he became increasingly irritated as his lunch hour dribbled away."
So now, instead of waiting on a teller, we wait in a long line of people trying to get to the ATM with the person at the front repeatedly putting in his card while all the time muttering under his breath "I'm sure I had money in here!"
This is me. Don't like it? That's unlucky.
The real problem with "yuppie food stamps" ($20 bills) is that they're worthless in a lot of contexts. Need quarters to do laundry? It may be hard to find a changer that takes things other than 1's, 5's, and 10's. Even if it does take 20's, some machines will accept the bill if it has less than $20 in change inside it and then give you $5 or $10 worth.
The moral of the story is, I hate 20's.
MEN! Whip it out, drop it in, push some buttons and walk away happy! Typical!
Why can't they just take their time for once?
When they came for the communists, I said "He's next door. Take him away. Goddam commies."
What's a Slashdot story without an anti-American post?
Since that has never occurred, it is hard to say. But the prophecies speak of a Duke Nuken Forever Gone Gold article with no trolls, everyone RTFA, no in-jokes, and no slashdot effect!
I submitted this story last night, and it didn't get posted.
Its always the case. The Brits invent the prototype, then the Americans refine it, market it, and take the credit. From Democracy to Computers, from Trains to Planes.
Now wait a second. We Americans have invented some pretty useful stuff like the light bulb, the telephone, and the automobile. You can't take those away from us!
Speak truth to power.
My fave, from when ATMs were just beginning to appear in convenience stores and gas bars.
:o)
Some theives stole and entire ATM from a gas bar. The ATM was (of course) secured, and the ATM guys were proud of their anti-theft bolts.. it would take an experienced welder 20-30 minutes to free the ATM, which would (of course) give the police lots of time to respond to the alarm.
The theives didn't have a welder.
They backed a cargo van through the side of the store, drove a forklift out of it, ripped the ATM out of the wall with the forklift, and carried it into the van.
Total time: under 90 seconds.
The moral of the story: never underestimate the brute force approach.
Of course, one has to wonder about why theives who could afford a forklift and cargo van would want to steal a few thousand dollars from an ATM... (nobody ever mentioned a stoled forklift or van.)
The ATM at my bank is so popular that it is actually faster to walk in, find a live teller and do your transaction than it is to sit outside in a line waiting for the ATM. Is that ironic? Depends on how you define irony.