ATM Reaches 40th Birthday

by Gill Montia

Story link: ATM Reaches 40th Birthday

The cash machine was 40 years old on the 27th June. The first ATM appeared at Barclays’ Enfield branch and was described as a mini-bank, simply because customers could access their cash 24 hours a day, a great improvement on the restrictive opening times of banks during the 1960s.

The ATM was conceived by John Shepherd-Barron, who at the time was managing director of De La Rue. The idea also caught the imagination of Harold Darvill, chief general manager of Barclays, and both Barclays and De La Rue worked jointly to develop the ATM. The first machine was installed less than 24 months after the two companies took up the project. Those using the early ATMs, which dispensed £10 in cash, had to use a special paper voucher which was inserted into the machine, followed by a 4 digit personal code.

The growth of the ATM has been phenomenal, by the end of the 1960s there were 595 cash machines in the UK and 781 worldwide. By the end of 2006, the ATMs UK presence had increased to 60,642 machines and 1.64 million had been installed worldwide. Of these, the most remote is at the McMurdo station, a small permanent base of scientists, located at the South Pole.