in 1939, a man named Luther George Simjian invented the prototype of ATM. He combined 2 patents related to hardware equipment at that time, and then persuaded a company named Citicorp to make a model test product. Six months later, a bank said that there was still some demand for this product.
Don Wetzel is the owner of some of these patents and the main contributor to the invention of ATM. When he was waiting in line at the bank counter to withdraw money, he came up with the idea of inventing ATM.
in p>1968, Wetzel was the vice president in charge of product specification of a company called Docutel, which developed automatic parcel handling equipment. Two other patents in the company are Tom Barnes, chief mechanical engineer, and George Chastain, electronic engineer. Together, they spent 5 million dollars to develop the first ATM. In fact, the modern ATM concept first appeared in 1968, and a working ATM prototype came out around 1969. Docutel applied for the patent of ATM in 1973. The first working ATM was installed in a bank in new york.
The first ATM is not connected to the host computer of the bank as it is now. It is offline, which means that the ATM will not deduct the money from your account immediately after withdrawing it. Therefore, banks are very concerned about which users are authorized to use ATM, and only credit card users with good credit records are allowed to operate at ATM. Then, Wetzel, Barnes and Chastain*** jointly developed the first bank card that was really used in ATM. The card has magnetic stripe information and a personal ID number for verification when withdrawing money. This ATM card is different from a credit card, which contains relevant information such as accounts.
since then, more and more companies have participated in the research and development of ATM.