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ATM Turns 40
01100111 writes "The world's first ATM was installed in a branch of Barclays in Enfield, north London, 40 years ago this week.
Inspiration had struck Mr Shepherd-Barron, now 82, while he was in the bath. The machine paid out a maximum of £10 a time." It struck me there must be a way I could get my own money, anywhere in the world or the UK. I hit upon the idea of a chocolate bar dispenser, but replacing chocolate with cash.""
From Wikipedia: A mechanical cash dispenser was developed and built by Luther George Simjian and installed 1939 in New York City by the City Bank of New York, but removed after 6 months due to the lack of customer acceptance.
It should be noted that the ATM of that era wasn't quite what we have today.
Instead of having a card with a magnetic stripe which you would get back after the transaction it was a small, plastic coated punched card which would be swallowed by the machine and then sent back to the account holder afterwards. In other words, it was an emergency "I need £10 of cash" card.
I remember my Dad having one of these from the National Westminster Bank circa 1972. ATMs didn't really take off until the magnetic stripe cards came out in the late '70s/ early '80s.
Agrajag: "Oh no, not again!"
They are, however you mean the British ;) not the English (who are just a small insignificant part of the UK, they can't even rule themselves given the number of german monarches and welsh or scottish PM's we've had, pathetic people! ;)
That's the first thing I thought as well. C'mon, this is slashdot. If it says ATM in the title, we sure as heck better be talking about the network protocol. It's news for NERDS.
The ATMs that charge now tend to be owned by 3rd party companies, rather than the banks themselves - they put them in convenience stores, petrol stations, etc. These hook up to a phone line and work in a similar way to the Switch terminals in shops - instead of buying products, you're buying cash.
Incidentally, the major company that operates these in the UK makes a tidy profit from doing so: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4101075.stm...
believe it or not all bank of ireland atms use Windows, plenty of times u see the bootup screen or and odd blue screen of death
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
A friend worked for Lloyds at the start of the 90s and ATMs were effectively terminals using SNA or X500 pads to mainframes. These days they all seem to use Windows so it's probably all over IP. ATMs in shops can still use ISDN or even good old fashioned modems - it's always a bit disconcerting to hear one dial up.
A good example of why not to cite Wikipedia as your source -- I followed your link when I read your comment (1830BST 25June2007), and there was no sign of Simjian or the Bank of New York on the page. But the page did list the invention by John Shepherd-Barron, which is the one you are disputing! I suspect many other readers had a similar experience. So either you were making mischief, in which case you've been found out, or it's changed since you cited in, in which case that'll teach you not to cite a publically editable source!
The key point you make here is that the PIN is encrypted. There are hardware failsafes too, that prevent people with sophisticated electronics gadgetry from trying to discern a PIN's location in memory on the chip, although people have tried to hack the cards using latent backchannels such as measuring tiny tiny power changes in consumption across the chip when it operates.
In short - don't worry too much about the PIN number being on the card. You have other things to worry about if your card is in someone elses hands than them getting your PIN.
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