History

Many experts believe that the first automated banking machine was the creation of an American inventor and businessman named Luther Simjian. Simjian held patents on all kinds of things–including an army flight simulator, a color x-ray machine, a self-focusing camera, an exercise bicycle and a teleprompter–but he was best known for his work on the Bankograph, a machine that could accept cash or check deposits at any hour of the day or night.

Even extremely remote areas are serviced by ATMs–there are two in Antarctica.

In 1960, Simjian managed to persuade a New York City bank to take a few of his automatic-deposit machines. So that customers could trust that they would see their money again, there was a microfilm camera inside the Bankograph that took a snapshot of every deposit. Customers received a copy of the photo as their receipt. Still, the Bankograph did not catch on. “The only people using the machines were prostitutes and gamblers who didn’t want to deal with tellers face to face,” Simjian explained, and there were not enough of them to make the machines a worthwhile investment.

By 1970, dozens of U.S. banks had jumped on the ATM bandwagon. To introduce this new machine to consumers, banks used all kinds of advertising tricks. For example, to get the attention of female customers, a bank in Columbus, Ohio, sponsored a six-hour Paul Newman movie marathon on a local television channel. Every 25 minutes during the movies, commercials for the bank touted the advantages of its new cash-dispensing machine.

However, it took a corporate gamble and a blizzard for the ATM to win the confidence of American consumers. In 1977, the chairman of Citibank took a huge risk, spending more than $100 million to install ATMs all over New York City. That investment paid off the following January when a huge blizzard hit New York, dumping 17 inches of snow on the city. Banks were closed for days; meanwhile, ATM use increased by 20 percent. Within days, Citibank had launched its by-now-familiar “The Citi Never Sleeps” ad campaign. Posters and billboards showed customers trudging through snow to get to Citibank ATMs.

After that, almost every one of the country’s banks followed Citi’s lead. The era of the ATM was underway.