The first ATM was installed in Enfield in 1967 by Barclays, which commissioned Scottish inventor Shepherd-Barron to make six cash dispensers.
The first person to use the machine was British actor Reg Varney, famous for his role in the ITV sitcom “On the Busses,” who attended the machine’s unveiling.
If Varney were alive today, his experience of getting cash from an ATM would be slightly different.
“The only thing that was really different about them was that customers had to collect special vouchers from their branch and then they could exchange those vouchers for a
bundle of 10 one-pound notes,” said the head of Barclay’s brand innovation, Carl Hyne.
The ATM or Automated Teller Machine proved a success. Today, there are some 70,000 ATMs in the U.K. and over 3 million in the world, according to the ATM Industry Association. The association also found that cash usage worldwide increased almost 9 percent between 2009 and 2013.
“Who knows what the world will look like in 10 years or even another 50 years,” said Hynes. “But [what] we do know is that cash is still really, really important to many of our customers, whether that is buying a cup of coffee in the mornings, or buying grocer
For the ATM’s golden anniversary, Barclays coated its first ATM in gold, and as customers came to use it, the two guards dressed in Barclays colors on either side of it, serenaded them.
Barclays celebrated another anniversary earlier this month. June 3 marked the introduction of its first debit card 30 years ago, the first in the U.K. Debit cards had already been in use in the United States since the 1970s.
