Who invented ATM (Automatic Teller Machine)?

John Shepherd Baron & others, 1967

So many people claim to have invented the ATM (Automatic teller machine) that is must be judged simply an idea whose time had come. The first proposals for a ‘hole in the wall’ go back to the late 1930s, but the inventor Luther Simjian never patented his ‘Bankomatic’ and never succeeded in convincing anyone there was really a demand, though Citibank did trial it.

History of ATM Invention:

In 1967 John Shepherd Barron who ran a company called De la Rue Instruments, built machines to automatically dispense cash, including one outside a branch of Barclays Bank in north London. At much the same time, James Good fellow, working with Smith Industries, devised an automatic cash dispenser with some new ideas, including a keypad to nominate the money needed.

At least two other people have a claim, both Americans:  Don Wetzel of the company Product Planning, which made automatic baggage handling equipment, and John D. White, who reputedly built his first ATM in 1973. The argument about who invented what when will probably never be settled to everyone’s satisfaction. Perhaps we can say that the two. Englishmen pioneered ATMs in Britain, and the two Americans got ATMs going on their side of the Atlantic. We can also say that Wetzel at least, and probably several of the others, generated the vision of banking without a teller from the frustration of waiting in a queue, and the equally common experience of needing money when the bank is closed.

ATMs were not an instant success. They took several years to catch on among wary consumers. None of the early ATMs had the continuous connection to a central computer we see today, and through that to bank accounts from which the money could be drawn. That linkage would later make ATMs yet another manifestation of the information revolution. Without a link to an account, banks were wary about granting access to cash from such machines. An early challenge was identification, and there Wetzel seems to have the edge. His machines were operated by ID cards with a magnetic stripe, much like today.