Hacker News Reader

Comment by ghshephard | Hacker News Reader

" People lined up at banks on Fridays, to deposit their paychecks and withdraw cash for the weekend. If you ran out of cash over the weekend, too bad."

Not in 1990, that's for sure. Heck, in _1981_ we had ATMs all over my small town of Vernon, BC. Wikipedia (which _wasn't_ around in 1990, and I would sorely miss) tells me the first ATMs came into the United states around 1969 - and browsing through that article, the appear to be fairly common by 1975)

View on HN

While ATMs were prevalent back in the 90s, what most people forget is that your ATM card was just that: a card that let you get money out of your account. The ability to use it as a VISA/MC came later. You still had to remember to get cash because you might not be near a machine for a while (they were only attached to banks) and you usually only had one credit card for big purchases and emergencies...

Yeah, those banks were slow getting on the bandwagon (for whatever reason).

I was working at a bank in 1977 (in the systems/apps group) when they installed the first ATMs in Tampa. It was an interesting time. The original development unit had to be moved across the street, from the data center to the main branch. So one Saturday, 6 guys got out there and pushed it down the sidewalk and across the crosswalk. Good thing no one from IBM was around, they would have freaked out. (it was an IBM 3614 ATM)

It was at least the early 90s before the first ATM showed up in the large central PA town I grew up in. I still remember waiting for the mail on Thursday for my dad's paycheck. My mom would sign his name and we'd go to the bank, same teller every week, and get $100 in cash and the rest into the checking account.

Okay, name the town with > 2000 people in the United States that didn't have an ATM until 1990. I'm genuinely curious as to how that came about.

It was Altoona, PA and in 1990 the population was somewhere in the 50,000 range. I'm not saying there were no ATMs just that I remember when they put the first one in at our bank. It was a big deal that they were giving out ATM cards.

There were ATMs all over Cheyenne, Wyoming, in 1983. Hardly the World's greatest metropolis.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com