
James Goodfellow patented the ATM, created the first pin code, earned £10 - Osiris30
http://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/apr/29/who-invented-cash-machine-james-goodfellow-first-atm-pin
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cpncrunch
>The ATM is a bunch of inventions combined into one unit. One person saying
they invented something so complex seems absurd.

For the most part, that is how inventions work. The person who invented the
mobile phone didn't invent radio transmission or integrated circuits. Most
inventions involve putting together existing systems and inventions into a
novel design. (As another comment points out, the Wright brothers is somewhat
of an exception to this rule, as the did invent many of the features in their
flying machine).

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Animats
The original ATMs described here were non-networked vending machines. ATMs
that talked to the bank's accounting systems came later. Walter Wriston, the
CEO of Citibank, had one of the first systems developed. He'd observed that
customers were lining up in branches just to ask for their current balance,
wasting teller time. So he had his IT people develop a card-based query
terminal. It didn't dispense money, but it was tied to the bank's computer
infrastructure. This required a lot of back-end development; on-line
transaction processing was new then, and mainframes delivered about 1 MIPS.
Getting the computers of that era to deliver the needed transaction rate was
tough.

It all came together with the IBM 2984, in 1972, the first ATM that talked to
the bank's accounting systems in real time.

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baldfat
The ATM is a bunch of inventions combined into one unit. One person saying
they invented something so complex seems absurd.

"Goodfellow accepts he didn’t invent the concept of a cash-issuing machine,
“but I did invent a way of doing it. When people talk about the Wright
brothers, they didn’t invent the concept of flying, everyone was trying to do
it – but they did it and got the credit for inventing the aeroplane, so I
think I should get the credit for inventing the cash dispenser.”"

~~~
drzaiusapelord
This is such a bullshit argument. Yes it probably has some validity as any
non-trivial invention has prior art, but the Wright Brothers invented most of
the fundamentals of their aircraft, and the ones they didn't invent were
usually the first time that innovation was tried in regards to flight. Their
practical competitors at the time were able to make hops and jaunts but
ultimately unable to do proper controlled fight and their designs often were
very different than the workable Wright design. See the Clement Ader's steam-
powered bat-like plane for an example.

The Wrights designed the gas engine (with the help of Charles Taylor), the
airframe was of their own design, and a propeller of their own design. This is
a significant number of innovations all at once. While its arguable on whether
others should get credit here, its clear that this really is a rare case of a
lot of different innovations producing the "invention." If you're going to
compare yourself to someone to defend a "we all stand on the shoulders of
giants" argument, I doubt the Wright Brothers are a good example for this.
They weren't standing on too many shoulders back in 1900. Flight was just too
new.

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blktiger
Interestingly, while the Wright brothers are famous for having invented the
airplane, they were utter business failures in the aviation industry. The main
reason? IMO, they were too focused on patent litigation instead of innovation.

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DanBC
This article doesn't say much about the machine.

You'd put your card in, and enter your pin, and the machine would give you a
£10 and keep your card. Bank staff would then open the machine on Monday
morning, take all the cards out, debit the accounts, and mail the cards back
to the owners.

I was surprised that there's only 3m ATMs! I would have guessed very many
more.

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billforsternz
>I was surprised that there's only 3m ATMs!

I always enjoy these "how many gas stations are there in Chicago?" back-of-
the-envelopers. My first thought was maybe a small city of 50000 might be
served by 10 ATMs more-or-less. Scaling up to 7B people worldwide my first
guess would be 7B/5K ~ 1.5M . Maybe even less to account for my unrealistic
first-world-everywhere methodology. So my guess is wrong too.

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aaron695
Given he was working in a job, I think the compensation was more than 10
pounds.

Plus like all salary people he had no risk. The bank bank rolled it and got
him to work on it.

It's the bank here that actually invented it.

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pkaye
No the bank didn't invent it. The person who invented it has their name on the
patent application. It is assigned to the bank.

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baldfat
The thing is another person was assigned the designation of inventor of the
cash machine back in 2007 but has since died.

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nfriedly
BTW, the $15 bonus he received in would be about $110 in today's dollars.
Still not much, but a bit more reasonable.

And, as others have said, he also received a regular salary and whatnot, so
it's a bit disingenuous to say that he only got $15.

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johnmoore
If it was today, a patent troll would of claimed it lol.

The examples show that the patent system doesn't work.

1) Inventor invents something, someone screws over inventor. 2) Inventor
invents something, someone copies inventor, Inventor takes it to court gets
financial ruin fighting his claim.

How to fix the system easy. 1)More and better help for inventors to license
their product especially overseas. 2)A inventor can challenge someone in UK
courts where they have copied there idea and has to pay court fees for the
inventor.

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twelfthnight
Apparently George Simjian came up with the idea before Goodfellow, but he was
ahead of his time and also didn't make any money with the idea:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cash_machine#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cash_machine#History)

EDIT: That is mentioned briefly in the article, too.

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derekp7
Back in the day one of the instructors I had in college was telling us about
his early days working with a precursor to the modern ATM. He said the biggest
hurdle was regulatory -- there were regulations on a bank's branch offices,
and an ATM was considered a branch office.

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naspinski
It's not an ATM Machine, or an ATM Cash Machine, it's simply an ATM: MACHINE
IS THE M!

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foobarbecue
"But Money can reveal the UK government" ?

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de_dave
"Money" being Guardian Money, the section of The Guardian newspaper devoted to
money matters that this article belongs to.

~~~
foobarbecue
I see, thanks for the clarification. Ouch for the downvotes!

