Automated Teller Machine

An automated teller machine, or ATM, is an electronic telecommunications device that lets customers of a financial institution carry out transactions such as cash withdrawals, deposits, funds transfers and balance inquiries at any time, without needing to deal directly with a bank employee. The Armenian-American inventor Luther Simjian built an automated deposit machine in 1960 that accepted coins, cash and cheques but could not yet dispense cash, filing a United States patent on June 30, 1960 that was granted on February 26, 1963, and in 1962 Adrian Ashfield patented the idea of a card system to securely identify a user and control the dispensing of goods or services, granted as UK Patent 959,713 in June 1964 and assigned to Kins Developments Limited. These separate strands of invention, secure card identification and automated cash handling, converged over the following years into the modern self-service cash machine now found outside banks and businesses worldwide.