Until recently, machines known as cash machines or ATMs did not exist in our lives. When people wanted to withdraw money, they had to walk into a building and talk to a teller. Today, the situation has completely changed.
With over 2 million cash machines worldwide, it is possible to withdraw cash in shops, movie theaters and even on the southern edge of the Grand Canyon.
There is a voice in every head as to who we have to thank for this technological banking genius. Luther George Simijian, a prosperous inventor of his time, designed the first "cash point" in 1939. Founded by the City Bank of New York, this cash machine was most often used by prostitutes and gamblers who did not want to meet the tellers face to face. For this reason, the machine was removed after a while.
Luther George Simjian was born on January 28, 1905 in Gaziantep, Turkey. Luther Simjian, the son of an Armenian family, first settled in Beirut and then in Marseille. He settled in Connecticut, America, as an immigrant in 1920. He studied medicine, but photography became his lifelong passion. In 1934, he moved to New York. He invented the first to photograph microscope images. Later, he invented a machine that took pictures by posing and focusing on itself. Luther George Simjian is the inventor of the make-up tables called “Reflectone”, where we can see ourselves from every angle. In 1939, Simjian invented the ATM. Simjian brought the basic features used in ATMs even today. Tried CitiBank ATM for 6 months.
John Adrian Shepherd-Barron OBE (23 June 1925 – 15 May 2010[2]) was an Indian born British inventor, who led the team that installed the first cash machine, sometimes referred to as the automated teller machine or ATM.
After this event, there was a recession that lasted for almost thirty years in ATM history. Then, in 1967, Scottish-born inventor John-Shepherd Barron (b. 1925) came up with the idea of a machine that allowed people around the world to withdraw cash whenever they wanted while taking a bath, and the ATM was reborn as a result. The first of these machines was installed in Enfield, North London, in 1967. This first cash machine was paired with a four-digit personal identification number (PIN code). So why was it four digits? Because the highest digit number the inventor's wife could remember was four digits.
The first plastic card-powered ATM was invented by Texan Don Wetzel soon after, and some people (including the Smithsonian Institute) refer to him as the inventor of the ATM.