James Goodfellow patented the ATM, created the first pin code, earned £10
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
For the most part, that is how inventions work. The person who invented the mobile phone didn't invent radio transmission or integrated circuits. Most inventions involve putting together existing systems and inventions into a novel design. (As another comment points out, the Wright brothers is somewhat of an exception to this rule, as the did invent many of the features in their flying machine).
It all came together with the IBM 2984, in 1972, the first ATM that talked to the bank's accounting systems in real time.
"Goodfellow accepts he didn’t invent the concept of a cash-issuing machine, “but I did invent a way of doing it. When people talk about the Wright brothers, they didn’t invent the concept of flying, everyone was trying to do it – but they did it and got the credit for inventing the aeroplane, so I think I should get the credit for inventing the cash dispenser.”"
The Wrights designed the gas engine (with the help of Charles Taylor), the airframe was of their own design, and a propeller of their own design. This is a significant number of innovations all at once. While its arguable on whether others should get credit here, its clear that this really is a rare case of a lot of different innovations producing the "invention." If you're going to compare yourself to someone to defend a "we all stand on the shoulders of giants" argument, I doubt the Wright Brothers are a good example for this. They weren't standing on too many shoulders back in 1900. Flight was just too new.
He's saying that he invented terminals, essentially. Look, he's holding up a punched card; he invented that too, I suppose. Jacquard, who was that? Just a silk-weaving loom boy.
You'd put your card in, and enter your pin, and the machine would give you a £10 and keep your card. Bank staff would then open the machine on Monday morning, take all the cards out, debit the accounts, and mail the cards back to the owners.
I was surprised that there's only 3m ATMs! I would have guessed very many more.
I always enjoy these "how many gas stations are there in Chicago?" back-of-the-envelopers. My first thought was maybe a small city of 50000 might be served by 10 ATMs more-or-less. Scaling up to 7B people worldwide my first guess would be 7B/5K ~ 1.5M . Maybe even less to account for my unrealistic first-world-everywhere methodology. So my guess is wrong too.
Plus like all salary people he had no risk. The bank bank rolled it and got him to work on it.
It's the bank here that actually invented it.
A wholly unsubstantiated claim; particularly egregious when discussing someone being paid by a bank, which have a long history of catastrophic failures. The salary person's risk is, at least, that the bank's money is no good (or won't be not long after received).
And, as others have said, he also received a regular salary and whatnot, so it's a bit disingenuous to say that he only got $15.
The examples show that the patent system doesn't work.
1) Inventor invents something, someone screws over inventor. 2) Inventor invents something, someone copies inventor, Inventor takes it to court gets financial ruin fighting his claim.
How to fix the system easy. 1)More and better help for inventors to license their product especially overseas. 2)A inventor can challenge someone in UK courts where they have copied there idea and has to pay court fees for the inventor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cash_machine#History
EDIT: That is mentioned briefly in the article, too.