ATM inventor Shepherd-Barron dies

This article appeared in The Times of India on 21st May 2010 (Fri)

JOHN SHEPHERD-BARRON

India-Born Scotsman Was 84

London: A Scotsman who came up with the idea for the world’s first automatic cash machine while sitting in the bath after he was locked out of his bank has died at the age of 84in Scotland.
John Shepherd-Barron’s “eureka” moment was inspired by a machine dispensing chocolate bars and he later sold his concept to an executive at Britain’s Barclays Bank over a pink gin.
More than 40 years after the first cash machine, or ATM, opened at a bank in north London, customers now have access to 1.7 million worldwide. “It struck me there must be a way I could get my own money, anywhere in the world,” he said in a BBC interview in 2007 to mark the ATM’s 40th anniversary. “I hit upon the idea of a chocolate bar dispenser, but replacing chocolate with cash.”
In the absence of plastic cards, the first customers withdrew money using special checks impregnated with a mildly radioactive material. The machines were designed to recognize the checks and dispense money once the customer had entered a personal identification number (PIN).
Shepherd-Barron’s wife suggested he used a four-digit security number because she said she would never be able to remember the originally planned six digits. The idea stuck.Banks in the US at first gave his invention a lukewarm reception, viewing it as a “wacky European idea that wouldn’t sell in America”, the inventor and businessman said.
Born in India to Scottish parents in 1925, Shepherd-Barron worked for the banknote printer De La Rue and was honoured by Queen Elizabeth for services to banking in 2005.
Although Shepherd-Barron was credited with inventing the first practical ATM, he had a rival for the claim to have developed the type of machine widely used today.
Fellow Scot James Goodfellow, also honoured by Queen Elizabeth for an alternative ATM design, said it was wrong to portray Shepherd-Barron as the cash machine’s inventor. REUTERS