Time to remember this man. His invention - the cashpoint or ATM - is 40 years old this week, and where would we be without it? Queuing up in banks, I suppose, than which few experiences are more mind-numbingly dejecting. The first public use of a British cashpoint, be it noted, was entrusted to this unaccountably popular comedian of the day.
Shepherd-Barron's brainwave came to him in the bath - it does happen. It was his wife who scotched his original idea of a 6-figure PIN, pointing out that 4 would be more than enough. He now has the great satisfaction, when struggling to work an ATM, of exclaiming 'I should be able to use one of these things - I invented them!' Their days are numbered, he (and not he alone) reckons, as mobile phone technology will take over. Unfortunately he hasn't worked out how to use a mobile yet...
Monday, June 25, 2007
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A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.
who in their right mind would trust one of those things? don't you just add a fiver to your bill at tesco's?
ReplyDeleteyeah, instead of queuing inside the bank, you get to queue outside instead. nice one, john!
Even conservatives agree the state has a responsibility for public health, safety and blood pressure. You should need a license to use one and be tested annually. If you can't deposit and withdraw in thirty seconds, you should have to queue inside with the wrinklies.
ReplyDeleteUsing Reg Varney to make the first withdrwal at a cashpoint in 1967 reminds us that celeb culture was alive and well decades ago! It also reminds us that many of our current rash of celebs may be less well known in 40 years than even Mr Varney.
ReplyDeleteisn't cash as passé as stan butler or is it just me and the queen who aren't normally to be found holding the folding? it's not that I mind carrying greasy bits of paper impregnated with the nations narcotics and bodily excretions, I just don't know what to do with the pocketfuls of shrapnel once you have to break into that fiver!
ReplyDeleteIt never ceases to amaze - amuse? - me when I read celebs money page, how much have you got in your wallet? and they say oh, I draw between £100 and £200 out a week - for those ''little'' purchases. Fuck me, if that's not a lot of mints and condoms! Me, I always get mine at Tesco's - on the card!
The shrapnel problem indeed - why does our currency not make the leap from coin to paper until the £5 point - and that, perhaps, for not much longer (fivers are rarer and rarer). The lowest denomination notes of any currecny I know are way below that.
ReplyDeleteApparently there's more chance for the chaps who fill up the cash machines to get mugged if they keep putting fivers in them: they have to fill them up more often.
ReplyDeleteYou have to go to the bank to get them in person these days.
The wikipedia article that you link gives the man's wife less credit than you do, Nige, claiming the proposed PIN length of 6 digits was rejected and 4 digits chosen instead because it was the "longest string of numbers she could remember".
ReplyDelete