Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-14-07005/USCOURTS-caDC-14-07005-1/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 410
Nature of Suit: Antitrust
Cause of Action: 

---

The attached material is cited in Sam Osborn v. Visa Inc., 

No. 14-7004, slip op. at 3 (D.C. Cir. August 4, 2015);

(citing , article by Linda Rodriguez McRobbie on

Smithonsonian.com webpage about the history of the 

ATM, available on 8/4/15 at 

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/atm-dead-longlive-atm-180953838/).

Archived by the Circuit Library on 8/4/15.

USCA Case #14-7005 Document #1592530 Filed: 08/04/2015 Page 1 of 4
The History of the ATM | History | Smithsonian

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/atm-dead-long-live-atm-180953838/[08/05/2015 5:23:22 PM]



ADVERTISEMENT

The ATM is Dead. Long Live the

ATM!

Usage is on the decline – so why are banks looking to the machines to

save them?



USCA Case #14-7005 Document #1592530 Filed: 08/04/2015 Page 2 of 4
The History of the ATM | History | Smithsonian

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/atm-dead-long-live-atm-180953838/[08/05/2015 5:23:22 PM]

By Linda Rodriguez McRobbie

SMITHSONIAN.COM 

JANUARY 8, 2015

Bradesco Bank ATM, Rio de Janeiro. (© Jon Hicks/Corbis)

652 212 1 32 19 1.8K

Automated teller machines, better known as ATMs, have been a part of the American landscape since the

1970s—beacons of self-service and convenience, they revolutionized banking in ways we take for granted

today. They live to serve; we only really notice them when we can’t seem to locate one.

USCA Case #14-7005 Document #1592530 Filed: 08/04/2015 Page 3 of 4
The History of the ATM | History | Smithsonian

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/atm-dead-long-live-atm-180953838/[08/05/2015 5:23:22 PM]

But in recent years, the ATM no longer does something that no other machine or outlet can do and its

days, some say, are numbered. Or is it? Because it looks like at the very moment ATM usage in on the

decline, some American banks are doubling-down on their ATM investment.

The “world’s first” ATM landed on a high street in Enfield, a suburb of London, at a branch of Barclays

bank; there’s even a blue plaque on the outside of the building, still a Barclays, to memorialize the cash

dispenser’s June 27, 1967, debut. The story goes that John Shepherd-Barron, an engineer at printing

company De La Rue, came up with what was essentially a cash vending machine one Saturday afternoon

after he missed his bank’s open hours. He was, notably, in the bath. Shepherd-Barron he approached

Barclays with the idea, a contract was hurriedly drawn up (over a “pink gin”) and soon after, the new cash

dispenser – with a £10 maximum withdrawal – sprouted up next to the bank. The machine transformed

banking and Shepherd-Barron’s name went down in history: In 2005, he was made an Officer of the

Order of the British Empire for his services to banking and the obituaries after his death in 2010 all called

him the “inventor of the ATM”.

It’s a good story, although it’s almost certainly not true – “absolutely rubbish,” laughed professor

Bernardo Batiz-Lazo, professor of business history and bank management at Bangor University, Wales,

and the co-author of a book on the history of the ATM.

Shepherd-Barron was indeed part of the Barclays machine group, though, Batiz-Lazo says, there were

several teams working independently to come up with a solution to the same problem: How can you get

cash out of your bank after hours without resorting to robbery? It also wasn’t an idea that came from

nowhere, eureka moment in the bath aside. Banks had been actively looking for a way to automate the

teller process – Batiz-Lazo says that the individual engineers might not have known that anyone else was

working on the same ideas, but the banks certainly knew. Moreover, ATM innovation had a number of

clear predecessors. Batiz-Lazo pointed to American Luther George Simjian’s invention of the Bankograph

in 1960, machine that would allow bank customers to deposit checks and cash into a machine and that

spent a short time in the lobby of a New York bank (it didn’t catch on: “The only people using the

machines were prostitutes and gamblers who didn’t want to deal with tellers face to face,” Simjian

supposedly said). Other progenitors include the application of the magnetic stripe card in things like

electronic ticket gates and innovations in self-service gas stations and vending machines.

There were at least two other groups working at the same time as Shepherd-Barron, although there’s

some evidence that a cash-dispensing device popped up in Japan briefly even before the Barclays device

made its appearance. Just a week after the Barclays cash dispenser was installed, a Swedish cash machine

appeared; a month later, Britain’s Westminster Bank rolled out its cash dispenser. Over the next two

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