NOT CHOCOLATE

See Also: CONFECTIONERY; MONEY Bank Notes; STREET FURNITURE

The inventor John Shepherd-Barron worked for De La Rue, a company that printed banknotes. He was responsible for his employers setting up Security Express, a joint venture with Wells Fargo that introduced American-style armoured vans into Britain. The business was launched in 1959. Four years later its turnover surged. This was as a direct result of the Great Train Robbery having been carried out.

The following year Mr Shepherd-Barron was appointed to head De La Instruments, an eight-person unit that sought to take the company into the automated systems sector. Banks used to close at Saturday lunchtime. One Saturday he arrived a minute too late to be able to cash a cheque. This annoyed him intensely. He set about trying to find an alternative means for withdrawing cash.

While lying in a bath, he was struck by inspiration - he realised that he wanted a device like a coin-operated chocolate dispenser that issued money rather than chocolate. This became the electronic automated teller machine.¹ At the time, Barclays had the reputation for being the most technologically innovative of the high street banks. He approached the company's chief general manager, who placed an order for six A.T.M.'s almost instantly.

Customers could purchase Barclaycash vouchers. These had been impregnated with radioactive carbon-14.² They could be fed into a De La Rue Automatic Cash System machine, a P.I.N. number could be entered, and then 10 would be dispensed. The inventor had estimated that the sum should be 'quite enough for a wild weekend.' At his wife's prompting, he had reduced the length of the P.I.N. from six numbers, which he had based on his Army number, to four. The machine was a standalone device that was not connected to the bank's central computer system. The D.A.C.S. was not patented. This was because Barclays lawyers had been of the opinion that doing so would have involved disclosing a number of technical secrets that criminals might have then been able to exploit.

The innovation was launched in 1967 with a publicity event that took place outside Barclays Bank's Enfield branch. The first customer was Reg Varney, the star of the television sit. com. On The Buses. The A.T.M.s became known as 'robot cashiers'.

A few weeks later Shepherd-Barron attended a banking conference that was held in Miami. In one of its sessions, he addressed 2000 members of the industry. Each of them had had a D.A.C.S. brochure placed upon their chair. At the end of the session, it emerged that only fourteen of the documents had been taken away.

Take up of A.T.M.s in Britain and overseas proved to be slow. During the 1970s there was an explosive growth in the use of plastic credit cards that were issued by the likes of Mastercard and Visa. Docutel Corporation of the US adapted plastic cards so that machines would recognise individual ones.³ Consequently, the use of cash machines surged during the 1980s. However, this expansion principally benefitted rival manufacturers, such as N.C.R., rather than De La Rue.

Shepherd-Barron moved to Ross-shire in Scotland. There, he sought to use his inventing skills to create devices that would foster employment in the region. In the aid of the local salmon farming industry, he devised a system that was intended to scare away seals. However, the phocas soon realised that such a device was probably being deployed in order to shoo them away from something that would be of interest to them. Therefore, they tended to congregate whenever one was used.

Location: Barclays Bank, 20 The Town, Enfield, EN2 6LS

¹. A mechanical teller machine had first been invented in the United States. In 1939 this had been installed by City Bank in a branch in New York. However, customers had proven to be unwilling to use it and it had been withdrawn.

². Shepherd-Barron was asked whether the radiation might have an adverse impact upon people. He replied, 'I've worked out that you d have to eat 136,000 cheques for it to have any effect on you.'

³. The encrypted plastic card and its associated computerised P.I.N. technology had been developed by James Goodfellow in 1966.

David Backhouse 2024