Is 1965 and the only way to get money out of the bank is by going to a branch and having it handed to you in person at the counter. The technology to distribute it in any other way does not yet exist and The normal thing was to have a day reserved to go to the bank. Their hours coincided with those of most jobs and this made it difficult for many people to get their money when they needed it. John Shepherd-Barron, like many other Britons of the time, spent Saturdays driving to his bank, but there came a time when When you arrive, it is already closed and it is impossible for you to get your money.. Upset that I had not been able to get it out and mulling over the issue, that same day He had an idea that would change the world.
‘It occurred to me that there must be a way to get my own money, anywhere in the world or from the UK. I came up with the idea of a chocolate bar dispenser, but replacing chocolate with cash‘, Shepherd-Barron told the BBC in 2007. ‘I asked myself, why not replace chocolate with cash?‘There was a precedent for money-dispensing machines in the 1930s, invented by the Armenian Luther George Simjianbut failed to gain the trust of the banks.
Thirty years later, candy bar vending machines were common and the benchmark Shepherd-Barron used for his ATM, which still exists today, It would be quite different from the ones we know today.The Scotsman went to the manager of his branch with his idea. Barclayswho showed interest in the proposal. The company where Shepherd-Barron worked, From the streeta British manufacturer of printers and security paper, delivered the first ATM to Barclays two years later. It was called Barclayscash and began operating on 27 June 1967 at a Barclays branch in Enfield.
There were no debit cards yet and it was actually a system that allowed exchange cheques previously drawn at the bank counter, with a value of 10 pounds each, for their equivalent in cashIf a customer wanted to withdraw £30, they had to put three of these cheques into Barclayscash.
Now, not just any check would do. Those that worked with the ATM were impregnated with Carbon-14 that the machine could detect and thus validate the check and then deliver the money. To clear up doubts about the safety of using a radioactive material, Shepherd-Barron said that ‘For it to do any harm to the wearer, he would have to eat about 136,000 of them’.
The second element in the equation was the number PIN which reinforced the security of the system. The authorship of the Personal Identification Number It is not only the work of the Scottish inventor but also of his wife, CarolineShepherd-Barron wanted it to be six digits long, but she convinced him that was too many numbers and made it difficult to remember. Caroline believed that a 4 digit number would work much better and so the PIN we know today was born..
Despite being the inventor of the first ATM, Shepherd-Barron failed to capitalize on it. He did not even patent it and It was not officially recognized as such until 2005.when he was awarded the Order of the British Empire for his services to banking as ‘inventor of the ATM’.
It was another Scotsman, James Goodfellowwho did patent both the ATM and the PIN number in 1966, although his ATM, more advanced than Shepherd-Barron’s, would arrive after this one‘Shepherd-Barron invented a radioactive device to withdraw money. I invented an automated system with an encrypted card and a PIN number, and that’s the one used all over the world today,’ Goodfellow said of Shepherd-Barron’s ATM.