Cash Machines
Cash machines first came to the US in 1939 when a brilliant engineer named Luther George Simjian at the Bank of New York City. Although most people marveled at it being the first of its kind, many never felt too buoyed up about this imposing piece of equipment that never talked back. They were so accustomed to their human counterparts that the cash machine quickly failed to attract any users. After the sixth month, they gave up and trashed the whole project.
It was not until a formidable company in financial equipment today De La Rue came to install the cash machine at a Barclays Bank branch in a small town in England called Enfield. This specific cash machine was a marvel in the right sense of the word. It never used cards but coupons. The cash machine would keep the coupons in exchange for the dispensing of cash in form of a fixed amount of pounds in separate envelopes. The card concept came to be introduced by a fellow called James Goodfellow which had a Personal Identification Number, PIN that resided in the cash machine’s card.
Cash machines were initially supposed to do just that, dispense cash and minimize the number of people in the banking halls. Every user had to go to their bank’s cash machine, conveniently located outside most banking halls. The cash machines were later networked by a guy who had the experience of automated baggage handling and thought he could do so for the cash machines. Donald Wetzel, the genius from Texas managed to get the cash machine displayed at the famous Smithsonian Museum and were considered the pioneers of networked cash machines.
These cash machines soon found their way in shopping malls, filling stations, airport terminals, and various social halls. Later, the concept of having connections between cash machines of various banks interlinked, making any card holder with a cash machine card to withdraw from any cash machine regardless of whether he belonged to that bank. This would of course attract a fee but saved people the time and energy to search for their bank’s cash machines within their locality.
Nowadays, the cash machines can be safely renamed since they do more than just dispense cash. From issuing bank statements, check processing, cash deposits, paying bills, taxes and transfers, we have interesting innovations that are mobile cash machines, affixed into vehicles. As well, the cards have changed and come with two options: the traditional magnetic stripe card that reads data from the bank’s database and the smart card with a chip that usually stores all the account details in the chip. Cash machines are definitely here to stay.
