A man you have never heard of died. He changed your life.

Sad to see that John Shepherd-Barron has died aged 84 after a short illness.

Who?

John Shepherd-Barron invented the cash point machine in 1965. He did not patent the invention and didn’t make any money from the idea. Before cash points, banking was run as a service for banks, not customers. Getting the first one installed gives you an insight into the way business was done then,

“By chance, in 1965, I bumped into the chief general manager of Barclays Bank who was about to have lunch. I said, over a pink gin, ‘Give me 90 seconds’.”

It is hard to imagine in an age of internet banking and 24 hour customer ‘service’ how revolutionary this concept was at the time.

Not all cash point machines are convenient

The first person to withdraw money from a cash machine was Reg Varney from ‘On the Buses’. Now why doesn’t that get used in pub quizzes more often?

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• John Shepherd-Barron, cash machine inventor, dies (telegraph.co.uk)