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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.
That everyone does their best thinking when they're in the bath.
Or on the can.
Summation 2
I would have thought people had been ATM'ing for hundreds of years...
I should get out more.
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I wouldn't mind the service fees so much if it dispensed chocolate bars with my money.
Anyway, FTA: "Mr Shepherd-Barron came up with the idea when he realised that he could remember his six-figure army number. But he decided to check that with his wife, Caroline. 'Over the kitchen table, she said she could only remember four figures, so because of her, four figures became the world standard,' he laughs." This is a great example of how simple, even mundane decision processes can affect millions, even billions of people. Imagine if he'd stayed with six digits, and people felt it was too hard? Or if he had gone with three, and everyone's account was easily hacked (relatively speaking)?
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A man is only as old as the woman he feels ;)
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
...anywhere in the world or the UK Wow I always though the english were a bit differentIt 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!"
My aunt and Mother were both working at a bank in Houston, TX that got the first ATM in the city (or so the story goes). One was inside the bank working on the internals of the ATM, and the other outside. As the wall was relatively thin, they could talk to each other and work on the problem. Well, after they got done, a customer arrived to use the new and fancy gadget. He began speaking to the ATM and telling it what amount of money he wanted. Always found that story to be funny.
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FTA:
"Money costs money to transport. I am therefore predicting the demise of cash within three to five years."
Haven't we heard that before? Like, 20 years ago? Seems that cash is just as prevalent as it always was. I just got back from a vacation to the UK and loved the fact that I could use my debit card to withdraw cash without getting socked with a 3% 'foreign transaction fee' that comes with credit card purchases (rather, there was a $1.50 flat fee from my bank for every withdrawal - so for 200 UKP, or about $400 with today's exchange rate, that's about 0.37%). Along with the fact that *everyone* accepts cash, including that remote pub in Nowhere, Scotland, I don't see cash going away any time soon. Yay cash.
A squid eating dough in a polyethylene bag is fast and bulbous, got me?
My local ATM was never down when they had the old text mode OS/2 version running. They replaced it two years ago with a CE embedded (I think) Diebold machine and that one is down at least once a week.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
If you visit the island fortress/abbey of Mont Saint-Michel off the coast of France, one of the first things you see inside the gate is a stone wall built circa 1000 CE with an ATM set into it. So they've obviously been around since William the Conqueror...;-)
rj
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
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.
I ask b/c I once worked with an inventor who showed me blueprints and a bona fide patent for what he considered to be (one of?) the first ATM(s).
/.'s Psychic-in-Residence: Psychic to the Geeks
The Wendy's Hanburger chain was just opening in town and they had a promotion with the bank I used. Use the ATM and bring in your receipt for a free hamburger. I started transferring $1 from my checking to my savings and back just to get a free burger. Then I discovered that these ATMs used a pressure feed printer rather than a sproket feed one and that if I pulled quickly enough on the receipt as it was being printed, I could get several receipts at once.
I ate WAY too many burgers during that promo.
Without the 2nd Amendment, the others are just suggestions.
Microsoft has a very significant presence in the market for embedded systems. There are customized version of Visual Studio. You are not limited to Visual Basic. WindowsEmbedded
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!