FACTS ABOUT THE
AUTOMATED TELLER MACHINE
- ATM -
G'day folks,
Welcome to some background information on something that has become a part of our daily lives.
The automated teller machine, or ATM, is such a complicated
piece of technology that it does not have a single inventor. Instead, the ATMs
we use today are an amalgam of several different inventions. Some of these proto-ATMs
dispensed cash but did not accept deposits, for example, while others accepted
deposits but did not dispense cash. Today’s ATMs are sophisticated computers
that can do almost anything a human bank teller can, and have ushered in a new
era of self-service in banking.
The Early Days of Automated Banking
Many
experts believe that the first automated banking machine was the creation of an
American inventor and businessman named Luther Simjian. Simjian held patents on
all kinds of things–including an army flight simulator, a color x-ray machine,
a self-focusing camera, an exercise bicycle and a teleprompter–but he was best
known for his work on the Bankograph, a machine that could accept cash or check
deposits at any hour of the day or night.
In 1960, Simjian
managed to persuade a New York City bank to take a few of his
automatic-deposit machines. So that customers could trust that they would see
their money again, there was a microfilm camera inside the Bankograph that took
a snapshot of every deposit. Customers received a copy of the photo as their
receipt. Still, the Bankograph did not catch on. “The only people using the
machines were prostitutes and gamblers who didn’t want to deal with tellers
face to face,” Simjian explained, and there were not enough of them to make the
machines a worthwhile investment.
The Advent of the ATM
By the
end of the 1960s, however, times were changing, and a broader segment of the
population–more comfortable with the idea of self-service and more willing to
trust unfamiliar technologies–was willing to give automated banking a try.
In 1967,
a Scottish inventor named John Shepherd-Barron was sitting in the bathtub when
he had a flash of genius: If vending machines could dispense chocolate bars,
why couldn’t they dispense cash? Barclays, a London bank, loved the idea, and
Shepherd-Barron’s first ATM was installed in a branch on Enfield High Street
not long afterward. Unlike modern ATMs, Shepherd-Barron’s did not use plastic
cards. Instead, it used paper vouchers printed with radioactive ink so that the
machine could read them. The customer entered an identification code and took
her cash–a maximum of £10 at a time.
The first automated
banking machine in the U.S. was devised by a Dallas engineer and former
professional baseball player named Donald Wetzel. Wetzel’s machine used plastic
cards like the ones we use today. (Instead of radioactive ink, the cards stored
account information in magnetic strips.) In September 1969, a Chemical Bank
branch on Long Island installed the first of Wetzel’s machines.
The Spread of ATMs
By 1970,
dozens of U.S. banks had jumped on the ATM bandwagon. To introduce this new
machine to consumers, banks used all kinds of advertising tricks. For example,
to get the attention of female customers, a bank in Columbus, Ohio, sponsored a
six-hour Paul Newman movie marathon on a local television channel. Every 25
minutes during the movies, commercials for the bank touted the advantages of
its new cash-dispensing machine.
After that, almost every one of the country’s banks followed Citi’s lead. The era of the ATM was underway.
ATMs Today
Today,
there are almost 2 million ATMs around the globe. Although use of the machines
has declined in recent years, likely because more people make purchases using
credit and debit cards instead of cash, the ATM continues to have a place in
modern culture. Today’s machines sell everything from airline tickets to movie
tickets to medicine.
Clancy's comment: Ah, the hole in the wall.
I'm ...
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