Sherpherd - Barron speeds the process of cash withdrawal.
"I hit upon the idea of a chocolate bar dispencer, but replacing cholate with cash."
JOHN SHEPHERD-BARRON
There was a time not so long ago when there was no such thing as a cash machine. If you wanted to withdraw some money, you had to go into a building and speak to a teller. Now, of course, it is possible to get cash from one of 1.6 million automated telling machines (ATM) worldwide, in stores, cinemas and even the southern rim of the Grand Canyon .
Exactly who we have to thank for this stroke of technological banking genius is a matter of some controvercy. Luther George Simjian, a prolific inventer of his time, devised the very first "Cash point" in 1939. Installed by the city bank of New York this cash machine saw little use except with "....prostitutes and gamblers who don't want to deal with tellers face to face."This machine was removed.
There followed a lull in the history of the cashpoint that lasted for nearly thirty years. Then in 1967, John Sherpherd - Barron (b. 1925), an inventer of Scottish descent, had an idea in the bath for a machine that will give you money, anywhere in the world, and the ATM was reborn. The first one was installed in Enfield, North London, in 1967. This early cashmachine was operated by a "token" resembling a check impregnated with radioactive material, which was verified against a four-digit persional identification number (PIN code). Why four digit? Because that is the most the inventor's wife could remember.
The first plastic card-operated ATM was invented by Texan Don Wetzel a short time later and some people (including the Smithsonian Institution) credit him with being the inventor of ATM.
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