A hospital in Meghalaya, where an Automated teller machine (ATM) inventor who was born in 1925 named John Adrian Shepherd-Barron has got a self-regulating teller machine 53 years after the first installation of such a cash dispenser globally.
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Installation of the ATM
On Tuesday, an official at the health facility said the ATM launched at Dr. H Gordon Roberts Hospital will turn 100 next year.
Dr. Roken Nongrum, Medical Superintendent of the hospital told PTI that the teller machine was put in after a petition was deferred on 7th August to State Bank of India, for establishing an ATM on the premises before the centennial celebrations of their facility next year.
Additionally, he said that access to an ATM at the facility will help patient staffers and parties.
Nogrum, being grateful for accepting the petition said, “We are thankful to the bank authorities for considering our request. The ATM is special as the inventor of the automated teller machine was born in this hospital 96 years ago.”
Concept of self-service cash dispenser
Shepherd-Barron invented the self-service cash dispenser in 1965, and his “eureka” moment was inspired by a contraption that dispensed chocolate bars.
The first ATM was installed in London in 1967 at a bank. Reg Varney, one of the well-liked celebrities of a popular TV show, became the first person to withdraw cash.
Shepherd-Barron, an Indian-born Scot, died at a Scottish hospital in 2010.
