The Day a Sitcom Star 'Robbed' a Radioactive Machine

The World's First Cash-O-Matic Moment! --- On June 27, 1967, the world's very first Automated Teller Machine (ATM) was unveiled at Barclays Bank in Enfield, London. But this wasn't just a boring ribbon-cutting event; it was a bizarre piece of history involving slapstick comedy and a hint of radiation. --- The Radioactive Vouchers: Since plastic cards with magnetic strips hadn't been invented yet, the machine didn't take cards. Instead, it used special paper checks treated with Carbon-14, a radioactive isotope! The machine scanned the radiation to verify the check. The inventor, John Shepherd-Barron, jokingly noted that a customer would have to eat 136,000 vouchers before the radiation actually became a health hazard. --- The Comedian Pioneer: To prove the 'scary' new technology was safe for the average person, the bank hired Reg Varney, a beloved British sitcom actor famous for the show On the Buses, to be the world's first ATM customer. Watching a man known for driving buses into things successfully navigate a high-tech computer was the ultimate 1960s PR move. --- The Wife's PIN Rule: Perhaps the best detail of all is why we use 4-digit PINs today. Shepherd-Barron originally designed the system for six digits, but his wife, Caroline, told him she could only remember four. Because she put her foot down, the world was spared those extra two digits of memory work! So, every time you withdraw cash, you can thank a comedian and a woman who preferred shorter numbers.