The ATM Industry Association (ATMIA) has announced the awarding of an honorary Lifetime Achievement Award to the inventor of the ATM, Mr. John Shepherd-Barron.

In addition, ATMIA is bringing Mr. Shepherd-Barron out of retirement to meet and address today’s ATM industry for the first time by presenting a keynote address at the association’s 10th anniversary conference on 20-23 February, 2007 at the Caribe Royal Resort in Orlando, Florida (www.atmiaconferences.com).

“Every single one of us in the ATM industry owes this gentlemen big time, from the ATM engineer, to the cash carrier, to the custodian, to the ATM owner, to the millions of customers accessing cash outside of bank hours at convenient locations every day,” commented Mike Lee, CEO of ATMIA, announcing its 2006 Lifetime Achievement Award. “Surely, he deserves this honor more than anyone else in the world?”

ATMIA’s 10^th anniversary celebrations next year coincide with the 40^th birthday of the ATM. At the end of June 1967, the first ATM was installed on the high street in Enfield, north London, by Barclays Bank. This machine was conceived by Shepherd-Barron in 1965 and developed the following year by De La Rue. The bank customer inserted a machine-readable coded cheque/check, impregnated with Carbon 14, and bought in advance. He then entered a related 4 digit PIN, entitling the customer to draw the amount of “emergency” cash stipulated on the cash voucher, within, or outside of, banking hours. The first ATMs were off-line machines. The bank accounts were not at that time connected by a computer network to the ATM.

The first magnetic card ATM was installed in the Corydon branch of the Midland Bank, now HSBC, in late 1967 a few months after the De La Rue machine had been installed.  The PIN-Card method used in all ATMs today was patented in Jan’ 1974 by an inventor called Leon Stambler.

The Executive Board of ATMIA voted unanimously to recognize Shepherd-Barron’s unique contribution to what has become a $14 billion dollar industry consisting of over 1,5 million ATMs.

Back in 1965, Shepherd-Barron was taking a bath one Saturday evening feeling frustrated that he did not have enough cash for the rest of the weekend. Banks had closed at 11 am that morning and were due to re-open their doors on the following Monday morning. It was then that Shepherd-Barron conceived of a cash dispenser placed out in the high street which would never close. That simple idea has given birth to this vast industry. It is the concept of automating banking transactions out on the high street, outside of banking hours, which is the essence of the ATM. 

The growth of the industry spawned by Shepherd-Barron’s invention has been spectacular. It took thirty years to reach the 1 millionth ATM.  Then to reach the 1,5 million milestone, it took only taken an additional 6 years. 33 years to instal 1 million ATMs. 6 years to instal the next half million ATMs.  That puts the phenomenal growth of the ATM industry into perspective. Several consumer studies have shown the popularity and indispensability of the ATM to the modern cardholder and consumer.

In 1994, Discovery channel made a documentary film about the invention of the ATM. The production crew, who had been looking at European inventions and ideas after World War 11, concluded that the ATM was the first original British idea to be adopted by the world since the invention of radar in 1937 -  a gap of 30 years.

In 1970, Shepherd-Barron formed Europe’s first overnight parcels service, called ‘Courier Express’, and later renamed ‘Parcelline’.  He retired in 1985.

Last year, the British government awarded Mr. Shepherd-Barron with one of its highest citizen’s awards, the Order of the British Empire (OBE), in recognition for his inventorship of the automatic cash dispenser.

Shepherd-Barron will be presented with his Lifetime Achievement Award at the Awards banquet during ATMIA’s 10th anniversary celebrations at its Conference East 2007 on 20-23 February, 2007 in Orlando, Florida.

It is the first time the ATM industry will officially recognize the role of Shepherd-Barron, forty years after he first had his brilliant brainwave in the bath one Saturday night, a vision which gave birth to the ATM.

Past ATMIA award winners can be seen on the association’s online Honor Roll http://www.atmianortham.com/honor_roll.asp.