ATM turned 40 years old

This year, all ATMs in the world have the right to get drunk and dive in fountains: 40 years ago, in 1967, the first ATM was installed in one of the Barclays Bank branches in London.

The idea of ​​creating such a device by a strange coincidence (remember Archimedes) came to the inventor of the ATM - John Shepherd-Barron ( John Shepherd-Barron ) - when he lay in the bathroom and thought about how to get cash on weekends when the banks are closed.

The first person to receive money from the bowels of the ATM, was the actor Reg Vorni ( Reg Varney ). By the way, the maximum amount that an ATM could bestow upon the owner of a check for one “session” was 10 pounds sterling.
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In those days, there were no plastic cards, and ATMs issued money in exchange for special checks covered with a radioactive carbon isotope - Carbon 14 . At the same time, checks did not pose any health risk: in order to cause any harm to the body, a person would have to be charged with 136 thousand checks.

At present, around 1.6 million ATMs have been installed in the world, and John Shepherd-Barron is 82 this year.

via BBC