FIRST - Cash Machine - The Town, Enfield, London, UK - First of its Kind on Waymarking.com

The blue plaque reads:

Barclays Bank plc

Barclays
Bank
Enfield Town Branch
The world's first
cash machine
was installed
here on
27 June 1967

Lives made much easier

The Wikipedia website tells us:

The idea of self-service in retail banking developed through independent and simultaneous efforts in Japan, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States. In the US patent record, Luther George Simjian has been credited with developing a "prior art device". Specifically his 132nd patent (US3079603) was first filed on 30 June 1960 (and granted 26 February 1963). The rollout of this machine, called Bankograph, was delayed by a couple of years, due in part to Simjian's Reflectone Electronics Inc. being acquired by Universal Match Corporation. An experimental Bankograph was installed in New York City in 1961 by the City Bank of New York, but removed after 6 months due to the lack of customer acceptance. The Bankograph was an automated envelope deposit machine (accepting coins, cash and cheques) and did not have cash dispensing features.

In simultaneous and independent efforts, engineers in Japan, Sweden, and Britain developed their own cash machines during the early 1960s. The first of these that was put into use was by Barclays Bank in Enfield Town in North London, United Kingdom, on 27 June 1967. This machine was the first in the UK and was used by English comedy actor Reg Varney, at the time so as to ensure maximum publicity for the machines that were to become mainstream in the UK. This instance of the invention has been wrongly credited to John Shepherd-Barron of printing firm De La Rue, who was awarded an OBE in the 2005 New Year Honours. This design used paper cheques issued by a teller, marked with carbon-14 for machine readability and security, that were matched with a personal identification number.

The Barclays-De La Rue machine (called De La Rue Automatic Cash System or DACS) beat the Swedish saving banks' and a company called Metior's machine (a device called Bankomat) by a mere nine days and Westminster Bank’s-Smith Industries-Chubb system (called Chubb MD2) by a month. The collaboration of a small start-up called Speytec and Midland Bank developed a third machine which was marketed after 1969 in Europe and the USA by the Burroughs Corporation. The patent for this device (GB1329964) was filed on September 1969 (and granted in 1973) by John David Edwards, Leonard Perkins, John Henry Donald, Peter Lee Chappell, Sean Benjamin Newcombe & Malcom David Roe.

Both the DACS and MD2 accepted only a single-use token or voucher which was retained by the machine while the Speytec worked with a card with a magnetic strip at the back. They used principles including Carbon-14 and low-coercivity magnetism in order to make fraud more difficult. The idea of a PIN stored on the card was developed by a British engineer working on the MD2 named James Goodfellow in 1965 (patent GB1197183 filed on 2 May 1966 with Anthony Davies). The essence of this system was that it enabled the verification of the customer with the debited account without human intervention. This patent is also the earliest instance of a complete “currency dispenser system” in the patent record. This patent was filed on 5 March 1968 in the USA (US 3543904) and granted on 1 December 1970. It had a profound influence on the industry as a whole. Not only did future entrants into the cash dispenser market such as NCR Corporation and IBM licence Goodfellow’s PIN system, but a number of later patents reference this patent as “Prior Art Device”.

The Enfield Independent newspaper's website tells us, in an article dated 12th August 2010:

Cash machine enthusiasts can breathe a sigh of relief - the plaque commemorating the birthplace of the ATM has been restored.

A circular blue resin plaque is now fixed to the wall of Barclays Bank in The Town, reading 'The world's first cash machine was installed here' with the strapline 'lives made much easier' underneath.

Unveiled by Enfield Mayor Jayne Buckland this morning, in front of a crowd of Barclays staff and Enfield North MP Nick de Bois, the plaque was paid for by Barclays Bank after its metal predecessor was stolen in February.

Police say it is likely to have been melted down for its scrap metal value.

The machine was opened on June 27 1967, in front of hundreds of onlookers, with On the Buses actor Reg Varney being the first to use it.

Steve Rogers, network area director for Enfield, who is based at the branch, said: "Banking has been transformed since 1967, when we had shorter opening hours, and this provided 24-hour access for the first time ever.

"I was in the area a few days after it was stolen and customers were asking when we were going to replace it. Enfield is very much a commmunity so people really cared about it. They are very proud of the fact that this was the site of the first cash machine in the world."

The cash machine was invented by John Shepherd-Barron, who sold the idea to Barclays.

The Enfield Town branch was chosen as the testing place for his invention because it abuts the market square providing space for queues to form.

By the end of the Sixties there were 781 cash machines across the world, 595 of them in the UK. There are now over 63,000 in the UK which allow you to obtain cash, top up a mobile phone, check a bank balance, request a bank statement and change a PIN number.

CASH MACHINE FACTS: At the opening in 1967, a man climbed inside the machine to push the first bundle of notes through in case there was a mechanical fault, according to Barclays staff.

The ATM's arrival was heralded with an advert titled 'An instant cash machine' which read: "Whatever next! This is Barclaycash machine, the first of its kind in the world. Put a special voucher in it - and out pops £10 in banknotes. Just like that. Any time. Day or night."

The original plaque was erected in 1992 to mark the 25th anniversary of the machine's installation. The day was marked by Sheppard-Barron, who joined Mike Steadman, who bored the hole to put the ATM in, and Ron Everett, who filled it with cash.

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