Suction Cups, Blue Beetles, and other early ATM Tales

11 Oct 1998 ATM deployers seem to be following National Geographic film crews in search of prime remote deployment spots, with machines now located in Antarctica, on remote mountaintops, and roaming the high seas on cruise ships.

One megachurch is even considering installing a drive-through ATM in its parking lot.

ATMs have come a long way, baby.

The clunky monolithic cash handlers of old now come in sleek, tiny boxes. Don Wetzel, the U.S. inventor of the automated teller machine, knew that just getting ATMs out the front door and into the banks in the early days was something of a journey.

In late 1968 Wetzel had an idea for a machine that would perform most of the functions of a bank teller. Wetzel’s Dallas-based company, Docutel, was created and managed by Jack Meredith, brother of Don Meredith of Dallas Cowboy and Monday Night Football fame.

The pioneering ATM manufacturer patented the ATM in 1973, but the market didn’t exactly open its arms to the technology. Many bankers were concerned about losing cross-selling opportunities if people had less face-to-face contact with their tellers. Docutel had to conduct extensive market research to prove that people were more interested in speed and convenience than personal attention.

Wetzel and crew had bankers in mind when considering security for the new machines. "We built a mechanical box that would have taken somebody eight hours with a blowtorch to cut through about a quarter of an inch," he recalled in a 1995 interview. "When [the banker] closed the door on Friday, he knew nobody was going to get into it and get his money."

Developing the machines without microcomputers posed a challenge. The engineers hardwired an early Docutel prototype but it frequently broke down.

Wetzel recounts stalling for last-minute repairs during a sales call with the temperamental show model: "I would give a little history of Docutel, a little history about the idea, the concept, automatic tellers, and so on. And then we'd go and get a demonstration."

After an hour and-a-half of listening to Don’s detailed Docutel pitch while engineers worked on the ATM, the client said, "I know more about Docutel now than you do. This machine isn't working, right?" The client asked to see the machine anyway, and, convinced, ordered five. Docutel eventually became so successful they stopped actively selling ATMs and just took orders.

Del Tonguette, president of Business & Marketing Solutions, recalls how Docutel machines deployed by City National Bank, now Bank One, worked: "The machines dispensed cash in $25 envelopes which had to be stuffed by hand. The entire process was very labor intensive and met with only limited customer acceptance, although the bank received a massive amount of positive PR."

Machines that dispensed cash directly required crisp bills to function properly. Some used suction cups to move the money. Jams from substandard bills were frequent. Sometimes rain would get into leaky machines and cause outages.

The machines were all paper-based and off-line, so off-site deployment at non-bank locations was unheard of. Banks promoted the service first to existing credit card holders, thinking that good credit risks would be less likely to abuse the service. But since ATM magnetic stripes were added directly to credit cards, getting your card eaten meant not only that you didn't get your cash, but you lost your credit card too.

If early ATMs were testy, it didn't stop banks from promoting them as perfect tellers.

Chemical Bank on Long Island installed one of the first Docutel ATMs. The bank ran a large ad in the local newspaper which read, "Our new branch will open its doors at 9 a.m. on September 3rd and never close again."

Marketers also used branding and ATM personification to overcome consumer resistance to using the machines. Del Tonguette describes a campaign he came up with for Ohio Citizens Trust Company in the mid 70s: "We dressed up a branch manager as 'Ocey,’ a blue and white armored prehistoric guard character that drove around in a blue and white Volkswagen Beetle for about three months."

'Ocey' appeared on every ATM, plastic card, application form, and piece of promotional material involved with the ATMs. First National Bank of Atlanta and Fifth Third Bank in Cincinnati still use the characters "Tillie the Teller" and "Jeanie" to make their ATMs less imposing.

When Docutel had successfully created ATMs that customers wanted to use, Ohio bank vault manufacturing company Mosler started building ATMs, and hired several ex-Docutel salespeople to promote them.

The vault maker's first machine had a steel barrier on its face, which lifted only when a customer inserted a valid card. The customer had a limited time to make a transaction before the machine timed-out. Problems with the door were common, and the machine's less-than-friendly time-out routine was not a hit.

The company brought in Docutel and IBM staff to help design a new machine. Initial reaction was good, but Mosler eventually sold the ATM business to TRW. Mosler now sells and services other ATMs.

Diebold, NCR, and IBM were all successful in manufacturing the first generation of ATMs. But like Mosler, Diebold experienced some hiccups when it first started distributing the machines.

The company, whose history includes Elliot Ness as president after he left the Untouchables (and suffering lost business as a result of Ness' alcoholism), had to tear some of its first ATMs out of the wall.

The machines were installed in Marine Bank in Erie, Pennsylvania, and National City Bank in Cleveland. Ross Beedle, Diebold service manager in Cleveland at the time, recalls some of the problems: "The MD200/400 models required round-the clock service and would only work for a few transactions at a time."

Beedle says that Diebold's 5000 series had a bullet-resistant fiberglass shield on its face just like Mosler. The machine's cash depository was almost six feet high, couldn't be serviced by most females, and was made almost entirely by other manufacturers. The company took the market lead when it came out with the logic chip-based 9000 ATM series, which did twice the work as Docutel's ATM at the time, and was half the size and weight.

NCR, the company that invented both the cash register and the MICR magnetic ink system used on checks, delivered second-generation self-service terminals in the early 1980s. The machines were produced in Scotland for worldwide distribution, and dispensed documents like airline tickets and boarding passes in addition to cash.

ATMs that deliver everything from stamps to movie trailers are commonplace today. The machines that accept coin deposits and cash checks have only drawn minimal interest before fading into the familiar.

And consumers expect to see ATMs everywhere they go. From churches to cruises to mountaintops, the ubiquitous ATM has taken on the role of a cash vending machine anywhere a person might need to access his or her money.

Far from hurting cross-sales efforts, banks and private owners alike have established ATMs as a solid, 24-hour revenue stream.

Steel doors and Blue Beetles are, however, now optional.

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