Believe it or not, the ATM or ‘Cash Machine’ is 40 years old today.

The Cash Machine was invented by John Shepherd-Barron, a Scotsman, and the first one was installed on the 25th of June 1967 in Enfield, north London. This machine was installed in a branch of Barclays Bank and enabled customers to withdraw a maximum of £10 per visit.

Another first for Shepherd-Barron was the invention of the PIN number. The 4-digit PIN is the worldwide standard and the choice of four digits comes from Mrs Shepherd-Barron’s comments that she wouldn’t be able to remember six digits.

There are now over 1.6 million cash machines worldwide.

Link: BBC story

This entry was posted by ForumLead on Monday, June 25th, 2007 at 5:54 pm and is filed under General Stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.