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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."
ATM's are certainly great for when you need quick access to cash, particularly when you're travelling abroad, but an even better development has been the debit card. I find that I hardly ever carry cash anymore, as the debit card is not only convenient (no change jingling in your pocket), but also makes tracking much easier if you use something like Quicken or Money.
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It's a fantastic invention, indeed...
But it'll be much, much cooler when I can snag $10 or $15 or $75 out of the machine. Why do we get only 20s?
Sony ha
...we're willing to pay for those quickie stops at the ATM with often usurious fees--usually about $1.50 each time..."
Those fees drive me nuts. When I was in college, using the ATM would add $2.50 surcharge. When I studied abroad in Japan, there was a single ATM that I could use in all of Nagoya. The downtown Citibank had an ATM that would only charge me $1.00 for every transaction. That's right - it cost me $2.50 to use a machine just a mile from my bank, but only $1.00 to use a machine on the other side of the frickin' world.
coughcoughscamcoughcough
Now I use a credit union and only use credit union ATMs. No fees.
In the (relatively) early days of ATMs a couple of crooks bought a machine, built a nice-looking case around it, and rolled it into a shopping mall. They programmed it to report that "your transaction could not be completed--please try again later." Of course, it wasn't connected to anything--except a recorder that was logging all the ATM card numbers and the customer-entered PINs. The crooks came back, rolled away the ATM, and drained the bank accounts of the poor folks who tried to use the machine.
Uh, no kidding? Guess what -- tellers cost them money too!
Obviously, banks make their money on 1) lending out deposits and 2) account fees. Everything else is just designed to get money into the vault, and ATMs are a vastly cheaper way of supporting customers than branches and tellers.
Actually, it's probably just lending out deposited money that's their real business. My impression is that the account fees function more to weed out unprofitable customers than to make money in their own right.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Here in the middle of the Netherlands, ATM and their bastard offspring have become an issue. Oh, they work nicely enough, do what they are supposed to do and of course we got the random bulgarian fuckwits who attach magnetic card readers, so our ATMs work just like any other ATM. The problem is the fact that banks use ATMs as a cheap means to close down local establishments. Instead of talking to a human person, banks now give us two ATMs to withdraw money, another specialized ATM-like thingy to deposit money and a big sticker with an URL on it to their online banking site. ( Which, if I may add, works perfectly with Mozilla. Go ABN-Amro! *ahem* )
For daily stuff this isn't much of an issue and the town where I live in is considered large enough ( 100k+ ) for banks to have permanent establishments, but what about smaller towns? Because this is the middle of nowhere, there are plenty of towns without bank establishments, where it was cheaper for the bank to put an ATM or two in place, promote online banking and telling people to go fuck themselves. Even though for daily use ATM suffice, how about non-daily things? Stuff like opening new accounts, information, major transactions*, mortages and supplemental financial services?
Mind you, this is the Netherlands. Almost no one here has creditcards and instead most of us pay directly from our bank accounts using our bank's card with our PIN. Think of it as an ATM which pays your purchases, comparable to a debit card.
* ) This means anything about EUR 1500 because of the default limit of EUR 1500 max withdrawal per day. Basically, we've got three options if we want to buy something EUR 1500+; use the ATM once a day for several days, raise the limit at a bank establishment and withdraw money at said bank establishment. ( Limits dont apply for non-ATM withdrawals ) Of course, since most establishments have been closed and allot of people around here live in the middle of nowhere, options 2 and 3 aren't really valid unless you want to travel 25km in the hope of finding a local bank establishment. Try paying for a EUR 20k car that way.
Hate me!
Sorry, this is going to come across a bit sexist, but it's an observation of mine that I think is true.
When women use cashpoints, they will often get out tiny amounts of money. Like, ten or twenty pounds. When men use them, they get out much bigger quantities, so they don't have to visit them so often.
I've had girlfriends that have driven me nuts getting out ten pounds, and then a few hours later having to hunt for a cashpoint so they can do it again.
Is this a valid observation or am I just a sexist?
My favorite one is at the town bank in Oberwesel, Germany. If you want to use it after hours, you stick your card through a slot in a medieval stone wall and a great iron gate slides open with a gentle hum.
rj
funnily enough, that was exactly the same story that came to my mind. You would have though they would have got more than $3000 though
over here in the UK the machines tended to be built into brick walls (hence the expression "i'm just getting some cash from the hole in the wall")
this has led to enterprising thieves using a JCB to steal the whole damn thing netting a cool $140,000.
just goes to show, that like so much in life, the real money isn't in making something, it's in stealing someone elses.
Years ago, I worked for a company that serviced ATM's. We did service for Docutel, Mosler, and a couple of others. Part of my job was handling the software bug reports, passing them back to the proper companies. The ones for the ATM's were always the most interesting.
In the late 70's, for example, one of the vendors had to supply a patch for ATM's installed in Illinois because customers could use an ATM at any bank branch. It seems that Illinois had a law at the time that only allowed customers to bank at the office where they had their account! Sort of defeats the whole idea.
There were numerous instances of bugs where the machine would seem to capture a card for one reason or another, but then spit it out to the next customer.
The trickiest part of the ATM mechanism was the bill dispenser. It had all kinds of sensors to make sure one and ONLY one bill was passed through at a time. For gross adjustments, they used fake money that was the right size, but regular paper. For the final adjustments, they kept several hundred dollars in real $10 and $20 bills in a big safe on the premises. The money had to be replaced every few days. The early machines couldn't handle old, wrinkled cash.
One of the things I did learn was that the security was pretty good, but only as good as we made it. We used to have card programming machines laying around our warehouse. They had locks and keys, but of course the keys were always in the locks.
I would hope they've finally recognized the problem and fixed it now, but I haven't checked recently. Actually I would be very surprised if at some point this wasn't discovered by not-so-friendly people, forcing them to address the issue, but this would be the kind of suppressed stuff you wouldn't find in their press releases.
In Sardegna (Italy) a gang of robbers has specialized in robbing ATM's (in Italy they're better known as Bancomat, yest just like bank-o-mat). They use a front-end loader and a truck (both stolen of course), they use the front-end loader to (literally) rip the ATM out of the building and to load it on the truck. They have seized five ATM's this year. The last time it took them ten minutes to do the job - they obviously triggered the alarm but when the police got there they were gone. And yes, the ATM's are rigged with a paint charge that's supposed to make the money useless... unless they know the right way to open the safe (apparently the alarm itself doesn't trigger the charge) - if they did it right, the last job paid 35,000 Euros (about $ 42,000)
N P/ MNU01/A02.html
Newspaper article (in Italian) here:
http://www.unionesarda.it/UNIONE/2004/NZ3005/CR
In the long run we are all dead. - John Maynard Keynes (1883 - 1946)
In my locality at least, you don't walk out the voting stations with a copy of your scantron ballot either. I have no idea why things are this way, but I'll just make up a scenario. Say someone threatens you if you don't vote for a person of their choosing. If you cannot get proof of who you voted for, at least you can lie to them and say that you voted for the person of their choosing even though you didn't. It keeps the election process more secret. With this in mind, maybe what the Diebold machines should do though is print a receipt that is stored in a safe in the election booth, so results can be verified. I don't know if people are worried this "receipt" would not represent what they selected or what. But even with the scantron type ballots they use now, you have no way of knowing that the scanner correctly reported what you wanted.
I actually know Don Wetzel and his life would probably be very interesting to read about by both engineers and others. The other things he has done in life would amaze you (he didn't just invent the ATM). He is also very kind and generous. One interesting fact is that he has 40 grandchildren (actually I think it may be 41 now).
Now if he would only teach me the maintence code to the machine so I can make it think the $20's are $1's...
I dunno quite a few important inventors/scientests/businessmen have had biographies has interesting as what they created. A few examples I can think of off the top of my head include Ben Franklin, Thomas Edison, Mikial Khaliznokov(sp?; inventor of the AK-47), Werner von Braun, John Garand (famously eccentric, at one point he turned his living room into an ice skating rink) and Alan Turing.
In addition to being brilliant inventors a lot of these guys led very interesting lives as well, especially during the periods when they were making their biggest contributions. Or they were just so unusual/eccentric that their stories are entertaining. Certianly far more interesting than the sordid tales of some celeb-du-jour's wardrobe or designer drug addiction.
"Listen: We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different!" - Kurt Vonnegut
From what I remember of the Seattle Underground tour, there were (nearly) 24/7 "ATMs" running in Seattle in the 1900's.
Specifically, there were booths dotted around the place which had tellers sitting in them. Same exact idea, but without the "A" part of "ATM".
Coming soon - pyrogyra
Some of those self-checkout machines at the supermarket are a LOT harder to use than others. I came across the worst example recently...
I kid you not, to check out at this thing, you must:
- Place your items on a "shelf" on one side of the machine.
- Tell the machine how many grocery bags you will use (how the hell am I supposed to know this BEFORE I pack everything?)
- Put one of your bags on a "filling rack" on the other side of the machine. Not putting the bag in this rack causes the system to not allow you to proceed. (For example, you only have 3 items, and decide to just hold the bag in one hand and fill it... not allowed here.)
- Take each item from the "shelf", scan it, verify that the right thing was scanned, and place the item in the bag on the "filling rack." Failure to place the item in the bag on the rack causes the system to not allow you to proceed.
- The "shelf" and the "filling rack" have scales in them. If your incoming and outgoing weights are different, the system will not allow you to proceed.
- If you use your last bag (remember, you had to tell it how many bags you were going to use) and remove it from the "filling rack", the system will not allow you to scan in any more items. You can not simply tell it to give you another bag.
The whole system is basically set up to catch you stealing something. It is not set up to actually be a convinient way to check out. I used it once, and I will never use it again. What a serious PITA!
I now go to a store with a cashier that scans my items and takes my money, and a bagger who packs my groceries and carries them to my car. It's worth the extra $5 or so for the weekly grocery run.
"Tomorrow's forecast: a few sprinkles of genius with a chance of doom!" - Stewie Griffin
Like those new self-checkout cash registers, ATMs gained popularity because they saved the banks money. They didn't have to hire as many employees or open as many branches, which was a great cost-saving measure.
The difference between the self-checkout cash registers and ATMs is that ATMs are generally much more convenient and quicker to use.
Those self-checkout things are absolutely horrible. It would be one thing if you simply had to scan it and throw it in the bag, paying at the end. But no, it can't be that simple! You have to constantly mess around with the screen, constantly adding and removing items from the bagging area, and the stupid machine is getting pissed off with you for putting the wrong item in the wrong place at the wrong time. Not to mention the things often can't figure out how to handle certain items, so you have to wait for an employee to help you. Waiting in line for a cashier is almost always much faster and easier. The stupid machines are just popular because the company saves money by not having to hire as many employees.
Get a clue, companies! Either keep your employees or make your self-checkout machines quick and easy!
Reciept comes up in a little window, you hit "OK", it dumps it into the safety-sealed bin.
Until it jams, I guess.
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