Beep Beep Cha Ching!

The cash machine is something I really take for granted. But it’s only a little older than Kowalski Heat Treating. The first ones in America are in those quaint black & white photos above. Hmm, fashions have changed, too. But they’re so easy! Pull out your card and get some cash. The machines are everywhere. Who knows, in the future, you might tap a button on your watch or ask Seri to get you some cash and an armored robot will show-up at your door in two minutes, cash in hand.  Hey!  It could happen!!  Read on. And if you’re interested, here’s a cool video about How an ATM Works.

There are so many things we take for granted these days – simple devices like traffic lights (invented in Cleveland), clocks working perfectly, computer networks at the touch of a button, or even simpler things like the phone ringing and working when we answer it.  One amazing device is the ATM – that turns 53 this week.  For young guys like me, I don’t remember a time without them.  It’s come a long way since 1967, when the very first ATM was installed in London. Inserting a card, typing in a PIN number and receiving cash is super cool – transactions processed and posted, and accounts balanced.  At KHT, we love innovation and problem solving – you know, your PIA (Pain in the @#$) Jobs! we tackle every single day.  We love it when designers and engineers figure things out and bring them to market.  So here’s to all the ATM inventors, engineers and companies who worked so hard to make these common place.  Thanks to Wikipedia and ncr.com for the info.

The ATM made its debut at Barclays’ Enfield Town branch in north London in June 1967. Its invention is credited to British inventor John Shepherd-Barron. The story goes that Mr. Shepherd-Barron saw vending machines selling chocolate bars and asked why a similar machine couldn’t be used to dispense cash.

An automated teller machine (ATM) is an electronic telecommunications device that enables customers of financial institutions to perform financial transactions, such as cash withdrawals, deposits, funds transfers, or account information inquiries, at any time and without the need for direct interaction with bank staff.

ATMs are known by a variety of names, including automatic teller machine (ATM) in the US (sometimes redundantly as “ATM machine”). In Canada, the term automated banking machine (ABM) is also used, although ATM is also very commonly used in Canada, with many Canadian organizations using ATM over ABM.  In British English, the terms cashpoint, cash machine and hole in the wall are most widely used.  Other terms include any time money, cashline, nibank, tyme machine, cash dispenser, cash corner, bankomat, or bancomat.

ATMs can also be used to withdraw cash in a foreign country. If the currency being withdrawn from the ATM is different from that in which the bank account is denominated, the money will be converted at the financial institution’s exchange rate.

The idea of out-of-hours cash distribution developed from bankers’ needs in Japan, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States.  A Japanese device called the “Computer Loan Machine” supplied cash as a three-month loan at 5% p.a. after inserting a credit card. The device was operational in 1966.

Adrian Ashfield invented the basic idea of a card combining the key and user’s identity in February 1962. This was granted UK Patent 959,713 for “Access Controller” in June 1964 and assigned to W. S. Atkins & Partners who employed Ashfield. He was paid ten shillings for this, the standard sum for all patents. It was originally intended to dispense petrol but the patent covered all uses.

In the US patent record, Luther George Simjian has been credited with developing a “prior art device”. Specifically, his 132nd patent (US3079603), which was first filed on 30 June 1960 (and granted 26 February 1963). The roll-out of this machine, called Bankograph, was delayed by a couple of years, due in part to Simjian’s Reflectone Electronics Inc. being acquired by Universal Match Corporation.

An experimental Bankograph was installed in New York City in 1961 by the City Bank of New York but removed after six months due to the lack of customer acceptance.

The idea of a PIN stored on the card was developed by a group of engineers working at Smiths Group on the Chubb MD2 in 1965 and which has been credited to James Goodfellow (patent GB1197183 filed on May 2, 1966 with Anthony Davies). The essence of this system was that it enabled the verification of the customer with the debited account without human intervention. It had a profound influence on the industry as a whole. Not only did future entrants into the cash dispenser market such as NCR Corporation and IBM license Goodfellow’s PIN system, but a number of later patents reference this patent as “Prior Art Device”.

A Chubb-made ATM appeared in Sydney in 1969. This was the first ATM installed in Australia. The machine only dispensed $25 at a time and the bank card itself would be mailed to the user after the bank had processed the withdrawal.

Asea Metior’s Bankomat was the first ATM installed in Spain on January 9, 1969, in downtown Madrid by Banesto. This device dispensed 1,000 peseta bills (1 to 5 max). Each user had to introduce a security personal key using a combination of the ten numeric buttons.  In March of the same year an ad with the instructions to use the Bancomat was published in the same newspaper.

After looking firsthand at the experiences in Europe, in 1968 the ATM was pioneered in the U.S. by Donald Wetzel, who was a department head at a company called Docutel.  Docutel was a subsidiary of Recognition Equipment Inc of Dallas, Texas, which was producing optical scanning equipment and had instructed Docutel to explore automated baggage handling and automated gasoline pumps.

On September 2, 1969, Chemical Bank installed the first ATM in the U.S. at its branch in Rockville Centre, New York. The first ATMs were designed to dispense a fixed amount of cash when a user inserted a specially coded card. A Chemical Bank advertisement boasted “On Sept. 2 our bank will open at 9:00 and never close again.” Chemical executives were initially hesitant about the electronic banking transition given the high cost of the early machines. Additionally, executives were concerned that customers would resist having machines handling their money.

In recent times, countries like India and some countries in Africa are installing ATMs in rural areas, which are solar powered.

The world’s highest ATM is located at the Khunjerab Pass in Pakistan. Installed at an elevation of 4,693 metres (15,397 ft) by the National Bank of Pakistan, it is designed to work in temperatures as low as -40 degree Celsius – you know, like a Cleveland day in February.

Most ATMs are connected to interbank networks, enabling people to withdraw and deposit money from machines not belonging to the bank where they have their accounts or in the countries where their accounts are held (enabling cash withdrawals in local currency). Some examples of interbank networks include NYCE, PULSE, PLUS, Cirrus, AFFN, Interac, Interswitch, STAR, LINK, MegaLink, and BancNet.

There are no hard international or government-compiled numbers totaling the complete number of ATMs in use worldwide. Estimates developed by ATMIA place the number of ATMs currently in use between 3 million and 4 million units, or approximately 1 ATM per 3,000 people in the world.

To simplify the analysis of ATM usage around the world, financial institutions generally divide the world into seven regions, due to the penetration rates, usage statistics, and features deployed. Four regions (USA, Canada, Europe, and Japan) have high numbers of ATMs per million people.  Despite the large number of ATMs, there is additional demand for machines in the Asia/Pacific area as well as in Latin America.  Macau may have the highest density of ATMs at 254 ATMs per 100,000 adults.  ATMs have yet to reach high numbers in the Near East and Africa.

So what will the future bring for the ATM? One thing that’s clear is that this channel will remain extremely important and continue to evolve, even though the emergence of contactless cards and mobile wallets has reduced consumer reliance on cash in some markets.

Customers will have access to an ever-expanding range of services at the ATM, from core functions like paying bills and transferring money between accounts, to buying stamps, train tickets and gift certificates. Videoconferencing with human tellers is also likely to become more widely available for people who want to complete more complex transactions at the ATM.

As far as security is concerned, biometric authentication is something we can expect to see more of, along with improvements in software to combat evolving cyber threats.

Some more recent developments suggest that cardless and contactless accessibility will be a significant trend for ATMs in the years to come. In 2012, Royal Bank of Scotland launched its Get Cash service, allowing customers to withdraw money from ATMs using a code sent to their mobile phone, eliminating the need for debit cards.

Just last year, Barclays introduced the UK’s first contactless mobile cash facility.

To be honest, I still like to visit the bank, chat with tellers and do my banking business face-to-face – but yes, I’m just fine to use the ATM when on a golfing trip.

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DO YOU LIKE CONTESTS?
Me, too.

As you may know the Kowalski Heat Treating logo finds its way
into the visuals of my Friday posts.
I.  Love.  My.  Logo.
One week there could be three logos.
The next week there could be 15 logos.
And sometimes the logo is very small or just a partial logo showing.
But there are always logos in some of the pictures.
So, I challenge you, my beloved readers, to count them and send me a quick email with the total number of logos in the Friday post.
On the following Tuesday I’ll pick a winner from the correct answers
and send that lucky person some great KHT swag.
So, start counting and good luck!  
Oh, and the logos at the very top header don’t count.
Got it? Good.  :-))))
Have fun!!

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Trillion

(top) This is a penny; (row 2) This is a trillion dollars! More explanation below. Read on; (row 3) Money things you can buy with…well, money: Sheets of money like this sheet of two dollar bills HERE; (row 4) The Dollar Bills A-Line Dress HERE; Dollar Money Pattern Print Dress HERE; (row 5) Hundred Dollar Bills Round Neck Short Sleeve T-shirt HERE; The “I Need Money” T-shirt HERE; (row 6) Mad Money with Jim Cramer Logo Men’s Short Sleeve T-Shirt HERE; Men and Women’s “MONEY TALKS (PINK LIPS)” T-Shirt HERE; (row 7) Million Dollar Fleece Throw Blanket HERE; Money Luxury 4 Piece Bedding Set HERE; And the current trillion dollar companies. You could own a piece of each of them HERE.

What does it mean to have a market cap of a Trillion dollars?
The internet search giant Google became the fourth tech company — after Apple, Amazon and Microsoft — to reach the market milestone – one trillion in value. According to a NY Times article, “Numbers have long held a special significance at Google. When the internet company was founded in 1998, it based it’s name on the mathematical term “googol,” which refers to the numeral 1 followed by 100 zeros. When it filed to go public in 2004, it said it planned to raise $2,718,281,828, which was the sum of multiplying $1 billion with the mathematical constant “e.”  And in 2015 when it reorganized under a parent entity called Alphabet, it announced it would buy back shares worth $5,099,019,513.59, a figure derived from the square root of 26 — the number of letters in the alphabet.  Last Thursday, Google hit another eye-popping number. The market cap of Alphabet vaulted above $1 trillion for the first time. That made it the fourth technology company to hit this milestone.”

I decided to see if I could find a way to visualize just what this looks like.  Here is a great story sequence to put it into context for us common folk.  Enjoy!  Special thanks to pagetutor.com – and be sure to view the videos – crazy fun.

 

We’re going to use $100 dollar bills, not $1 bills, and the following definitions of millionbillion and trillion

MILLION = 1,000,000
BILLION = 1,000,000,000
TRILLION = 1,000,000,000,000

We’ll start with one packet of one hundred dollar bills – It’s about 6″ by 2-1/2″ by 0.43″ high equaling $10,000 – a number we can imagine.


100 x $100 = $10,000


Next we’ll arrange 10 packets on the ground like so…equaling $100,000.  Think we can still comprehend this.

10 x $10,000 = $100,000


If we increase it to 10 layers high, we get $1,000,000 (one million dollars). I like this little pile – you can put it on my desk if you like!!

10 x $100,000 = $1,000,000
The pile is 12″ wide (2 x 6″), 12.5″ deep (5 x 2.5″) and 4.3″ high (10 x .43″).


Now we’ll look at a pallet, something we use all the time here at KHT.  For us, moving your parts around our plants and solving you PIA (@#$) Jobs, is much like driving around with “your parts = your money” – we take it very seriously!!.
If we start with one layer (7 packets wide by 16 packets deep) with each packet being $10,000 – a million, one hundred twenty thousand per layer.

7 x 16 = 112 packets per layer
112 x $10,000 = $1,120,000 per layer


Increase that to 90 layers and you have a stack 38.7″ tall (plus 4″ for the pallet) that is worth a little over $100,000,000 (one hundred million dollars).

90 x $1,120,000 = $100,800,000
For the sake of simplicity, we’ll round this down and consider a pallet to be exactly $100,000,000 (one hundred million dollars). We’ll just put the extra $800,000 aside and have ourselves a party. (with all this money sloshing around, who’s really gonna miss $800K?)


Next, ten pallets of $100 million are $1 billion…

10 x $100,000,000 = $1,000,000,000 (one billion dollars)
Here is where we may start run into problems. In some parts of the world, this may be referred to as a “thousand million” (or “milliard”) rather than a billion. At any rate, for our purposes here, we’re comfortably at one billion dollars ($1,000,000,000).


Next, a row of 50 double-stacked pallets (50 x 2 = 100 pallets total) – don’t get excited…we’re only at ten billion.

100 x $100,000,000/pallet = $10,000,000,000 (ten billion dollars)


And now just multiply that by 100 rows…. bingo – one trillion! Be sure to notice the little guy at the bottom left corner – that’s me, examining my inventory.


100 rows x $10,000,000,000 = $1,000,000,000,000 (one trillion dollars)


Here’s another view oriented a little more to the front…

So, one hundred rows x 100 pallets per row is 10,000 pallets.  That’s a LOT of $100 bills! You know, it occurs to me…. if you were the guy stacking all those pallets and you “borrowed” one single bill from the top of each pallet, after you were done, you’d have yourself a cool $million. Nice.


|———Dimensions———|
Each individual pallet is 42″ wide by 40″ deep. The height of the bills is 38.7″. Add 4″ for a pallet and the total height of one pallet of bills is 42.7″. In the field of pallets above, the pallets are spaced 12″ apart.
The field is 50 pallets x 100 pallets by 2 pallets high, so…
width = (50 x 42″) + (49 x 12″) = 2100″ + 588″ = 2688″ = 224 ft
depth = (100 x 40″) + (99 x 12″) = 4000″ + 1188″ = 5188″ = 432.33ft
height = 2 x 42.7″ = 85.4″ = just a little over 7ft high
So our field of pallets is roughly 224ft x 432ft x 7ft high.  At 96,768 square feet, it’s about 2.2 acres and well over the size of a football field.  With the new buildings we’ve added to our production, assembly and distribution campus, this would fit nicely here at KHT!  (don’t worry – I discussed this with Jackie, and she’s fine with this!!).
And that gets us to better understand Goggle’s remarkable accomplishment.
With this in mind, in a small way – a million (billion and trillion) thank you’s to all my customers for allowing KHT to do your work – we are grateful.

Check Out This Video:  A trillion using ones.