From FOX News:
90-year-old inventor of the ATM celebrates its 50th birthday, admits wife has never used one
It was a cool Friday afternoon in 1968 and businessman Donald Wetzel needed money to travel before the end of the weekend.
The then-40-year-old examined the long line snaking through the bank and out the door, the clock was etching close to 5 o’clock, and his agitation was only growing.
“So much of what they were doing was withdrawals, and it struck me as I was standing in line, that there ought to be a machine that could do that,” Wetzel, who is 90, told Fox News. “And something that didn’t need the bank to be open – customers could get money 24 hours, seven days a week. I thought it would be marketable, and it turns out it was.”
And so the idea for the Automated Teller Machine, better known as the ATM, was born – and would radically change the way people all over the world conducted bank transactions, and how every financial institution functioned.
First one went live September 2nd, 1969
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