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You’re standing on a street corner at 11:00 PM. You need twenty bucks for a taxi or a late-night slice of pizza. You walk up to a glowing hole in the wall, slide a piece of plastic into a slot, and—magic—cash appears. We don't even think about it anymore. It’s just part of the furniture of modern life. But if you start digging into who is the inventor of atm machine, you’ll find that the "magic" wasn't the work of one lone genius in a garage. It was more like a messy, global race involving chocolate bars, disgruntled bank customers, and a lot of radioactive paper.
Honestly, asking for a single name is like asking who invented the car. Is it Benz? Ford? Depends on who you ask and what your definition of a "car" is. The ATM had several "parents" across the globe, and they all have a pretty convincing claim to the throne.
The Chocolate Bar Inspiration: John Shepherd-Barron
If you look at most history books or check the Guinness World Records, the name that pops up most often is John Shepherd-Barron. He was a Scotsman working for De La Rue, a company that printed banknotes. The story goes that he was lying in the bathtub one day in the mid-1960s, fuming because he had missed his bank’s closing time. Banks back then had shorter hours than a high school library.
He started thinking about vending machines. If you could put a coin in a machine and get a chocolate bar, why couldn't you get cash?
He pitched the idea to Barclays. They bought it. On June 27, 1967, the world’s first ATM (then called a De La Rue Automatic Cashier) was installed at a Barclays branch in Enfield, North London. A famous British TV star named Reg Varney was the first person to use it. But here’s the kicker: it didn't use plastic cards. You had to use special checks impregnated with Carbon-14, a radioactive substance. The machine detected the radiation, matched it to a four-digit PIN, and spit out a £10 note. Shepherd-Barron originally wanted a six-digit PIN because that was his army service number, but his wife told him she could only remember four digits. That’s literally why your bank PIN is four digits today.
The American Contender: Don Wetzel and the Plastic Card
While the Brits were playing with radioactive paper, a guy named Don Wetzel was standing in a long line at a bank in Dallas, Texas. It was 1968. Wetzel was an executive at Docutel, a company that handled baggage-handling equipment for airports. He had the same "aha!" moment as Shepherd-Barron: this line is ridiculous, and a machine should be doing this.
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Wetzel’s version was much closer to what we use today. His machine used a plastic card with a magnetic stripe. Along with engineers Tom Barnes and George Chastain, he spent millions developing the "Docuteller." It was installed at Chemical Bank in Rockville Centre, New York, in 1969.
The bank’s ad campaign was legendary: "On Sept. 2, our bank will open at 9:00 and never close again." Wetzel’s machine was a beast. It cost about $30,000 to build, which was a fortune back then. It was also purely "off-line," meaning it couldn't talk to the bank’s main computer in real-time. It just recorded the transaction on a magnetic tape that the bank processed later.
Don't Forget the "Bankograph" and Luther Simjian
If we’re being technical about who is the inventor of atm machine, we have to go back even further to 1960. An Armenian-American inventor named Luther Simjian convinced City Bank of New York (now Citibank) to trial a machine called the Bankograph.
It was a hole in the wall that accepted cash and check deposits. It didn't dispense money, though. It just took it. It failed miserably. Simjian later famously noted that the only people using the machine were "prostitutes and gamblers who didn't want to face tellers." The bank pulled the machines after six months. Turns out, people like getting money from machines, but they were a lot more nervous about giving it to them.
The Mystery of James Goodfellow
There is a quiet engineer in Scotland named James Goodfellow who arguably deserves more credit than anyone. While Shepherd-Barron was using radioactive checks, Goodfellow patented a system in 1966 that used a plastic card and a PIN.
His employer, Smiths Industries, didn't have the marketing muscle of De La Rue or the American banks. Goodfellow was eventually awarded an OBE (Order of the British Empire) for his invention, but he didn't get rich from it. He’s often the "forgotten man" in the debate over who is the inventor of atm machine, despite his technology being the most direct ancestor of the modern interface.
The global spread and the "Network" effect
By the early 70s, the race was on. In Japan, Omron was developing their own versions. In Sweden, a company called Metior was doing the same. The real breakthrough didn't happen because of the hardware, though. It happened because of networking.
In the late 1970s and early 80s, banks started connecting their ATMs to a central network. This meant you could go to a different bank's machine and still get your money. That changed everything. It turned the ATM from a niche convenience for one bank's customers into a global financial utility.
Why the answer still matters today
You might think this is just ancient history. It isn't. The story of the ATM is the story of how we learned to trust technology with our most sensitive asset: our money.
The transition from the "Bankograph" (which nobody trusted) to the modern ATM (which we use without thinking) represents a massive psychological shift in human behavior. It paved the way for online banking, PayPal, and even crypto. If we couldn't trust a hole in the wall to give us twenty bucks, we never would have trusted a smartphone to manage our entire life savings.
Common Misconceptions about the ATM
- The "First" ATM was in the US: Nope. London beat New York by two years.
- The inventor got rich: Most of the primary inventors were employees of large companies. They received their salaries and perhaps a small bonus or award, but they didn't get a "per-swipe" royalty.
- ATMs were an instant hit: Banks actually struggled to get people to use them for years. It took the massive "Blizzard of '78" in New York, which shut down banks but kept ATMs running, to prove their worth to the public.
Actionable Insights for the Curious
If you’re interested in the history of fintech or just want to appreciate the tech behind your next withdrawal, keep these points in mind:
- Check the "Firsts": If you're ever in Enfield, North London, there's a silver plaque at the Barclays branch marking the site of the first machine. It's a bit of a pilgrimage site for finance nerds.
- Look at the Patents: If you want to see the real "DNA" of the ATM, look up James Goodfellow's 1966 patent (UK Patent No. 1,197,183). It’s a masterclass in elegant engineering for its time.
- Security Evolution: Notice how we’ve moved from radioactive paper to magnetic stripes, then to EMV chips, and now to "contactless" NFC withdrawals. The hardware changes, but the core concept—accessing your ledger from a remote terminal—remains exactly as it was envisioned in a bathtub in 1965.
- The Future of Cash: Even as we move toward a cashless society, the "Automated Teller" concept is evolving into ITMs (Interactive Teller Machines) where you can video chat with a human, proving that while the inventor solved the delivery problem, we still occasionally want the human touch.
The question of who is the inventor of atm machine doesn't have a single name because the ATM wasn't a single invention. It was a global solution to a universal problem: humans hate waiting in line, and we really love having access to our money whenever we want it. Whether it was Shepherd-Barron's chocolate bar moment or Wetzel's airport baggage experience, the ATM was born out of pure, relatable impatience.