Faulty Bank Notes From ATM

Other day I came to know about an interesting as well as a bit disturbing incident from one Mr. T.

While we were driving from R.K. Puram to Gurgaon in his white Santro (if I can remember the car model correctly), he told me that other day he had come across a somewhat shocking experience. He had drawn three bank notes of Rs. 500 denomination from a Gurgaon-based ATM of a reputable private bank (an Indian bank to be precise). Later he found all the three notes to be faulty, and he failed to use any of them. The net result was the loss of Rs. 1,500 (sorry for using the outdated symbol of the Indian rupee).

I asked him whether those notes were fake. He said that they were not exactly fake, but were so faulty that nobody accepted them. While I could not exactly follow what he was trying to say, I could manage to understand that those notes were at least not fresh notes but used ones.

And if we find that we are getting used notes from ATM, that alone is quite startling (even if the notes are otherwise OK and can be used).

So I felt that people must know about the incident, and so decided to share the same through this online medium.

Do not get me wrong. My intention is not to create panic. In fact I am myself not sure about exactly what was wrong with those notes. I just wanted to make people aware that such thing may happen, though it will certainly be a rare case.

John Shepherd-Barron, Father of ATM, Dead

John Shepherd-Barron is no more. The 84 years old Scottish breathed his last on 20th May 2010 at Inverness’s Raigmore Hospital in northern Scotland.

But who was this John Shepherd-Barron, in the first place?


Well, he was the man credited with inventing something that you and me (and millions of people across the world) use on a regular basis. In fact, it is a key constituent of the modern human civilization. And that is Automated Teller Machine or ATM.


Shepherd-Barron reportedly came up with the concept of ATM in 1965, while he was having bath. And interestingly, he got the idea of ATM from machine dispensing chocolate bars.

By the way, Shepherd-Barron had an “Indian” connection. How? Well, he was born in the small town of Shillong in North-East India.