Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
that I can get a transaction receipt from a Diebold ATM, but not from a Diebolt voting machine.
Je n'ai pas d'avenir Je n'ai qu'un destin Celui de n'être qu'un souvenir C'est pour demain
Actor. Actor. Actor. Actor. Actor. Actor. Actor. Jock. Actor. Actor. Jock. Actor. Actor. Jock.
I've heard they have a busniessman once in a while, but only the billionaire figurehead type.
Think they'd ever do a biography of the guy who invented one of best convenience devices ever created? No. I guess that's boring compared to Dubiously-Talented-Generic-Actress-Bint fretting over how hard it is to find a good sitter for her children's cat as they go on vacation to the South of France.
And people wonder why I'm a misanthrope.
--- Ban humanity.
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.
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
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
From the article:
The success of the ATM inspired similar innovations (some more frustrating than others) in a number of nonfinancial industries as well. Full-service gas stations have all but given way to credit card-primed gas pumps. Delta Air Lines has 846 do-it-yourself check-in terminals in 83 U.S. cities. Kroger has self-check-out lanes in more than 1,400 supermarkets. And you can find similar aisles in 850 Home Depot stores.
Pay-at-the-pump stations are so convenient I will not use a traditional pay-inside gas pump unless absolutely necessary, even if it means going a bit out of my way. The self-service check-in option at the airport is a $DEITYsend, too: not checking any bags? Why muck around behind people who have never before seen the inside of an airport? Identify yourself to the kiosk with a credit card or frequent flyer card, get the boarding pass and go.
I find the self-serve lanes at store rather less useful, but am amazed at how quickly the ATM model has become both widespread and nearly indispensable.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
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!
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.
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?
Why is the hero of this story the chap in Dallas and not the guy in Enfield? Although his invention didn't have all the functionality of the moden machines it also allowed access to cash 24 hours a day, rather like cashing a cheque.
Would it be outrageous to supose that this spin might be because the inventor of the machine in Enfield was not American? Not that I would suggest Americans ever revise history...
In the UK, ATMs that are part of the Link network are generally free to all participating banks. So, even though I'm a HSBC user, I can use HSBC, Natwest, Lloyds TSB, Halifax etc. ATMs for free. The only time you ever really need to pay to use ATMs is for the private ones in clubs and bars and for building societies.
I am almost certain it was Diebold. While I can't recall specifically that the 1999 machines were Diebold, I do know that Diebold was used by this bank for many years around that time. All machines that I recall had a very prominent "Diebold" logo ever since the machines were introduced in the 1970's. I don't recall any other vendor.
By the way I suspect that historically the reason for the embedded PIN was that I think (I'm not positive of course) that early machines did not "phone home" to check the PIN but instead were stand-alone machines. Back then you could not use the card more than once per day (probably the usage date was written to the stripe), with a rather low maximum withdrawal of a couple hundred dollars or something, and a "cash reserve" credit approval was required for all ATM accounts. Those are my clues.