We have now completed 50 years of the invention of the Automatic Teller Machine or ATM

We have completed 50 years of the invention of the Automatic Teller Machine or ATM for short, the much-beloved Cash point with its multiple functions that has by now become an indispensable part of our lives all over the world. John Shepherd-Barron had once explained how he had come up with the idea of cash dispensers in 1965 while lying in his bath after finding that his bank had closed for the day. It used to be his habit to withdraw money on Saturdays, but that particular weekend he had arrived one minute late to find the bank doors already locked. Later that year, he happened to bump into the Chief General Manager of Barclay's Bank who was about to have lunch. Over a pink gin, Shepherd-Barron asked him for 90 seconds time to pitch his idea of the cash machine. "I told him that I had an idea that if you put your standard Barclay's Bank cheque through a slot in the side of the Bank, you will receive standard amounts of money round the clock." He said, 'Come and see me on Monday morning'." Barclay's commissioned Shepherd-Barron to build six cash dispensers, the first of which was installed at a branch in the North London suburb of Enfield on June27, 1967. Shepherd-Barron was born at Shillong, India in1925 and served in the Indian Army in Second Airborne division where he taught the Gurkhas how to parachute. He also invented the Personal Identification Number (PIN) by recalling his Indian Army number. He had originally intended to make PIN's 6-digit long, but reduced the number to 4 when his wife, Caroline complained that six digits were too many to remember. "Over the kitchen table, she said she could remember only four figures. So, because of her, four figures became the world standard for ATM PIN," Shepherd-Barron recalled. All this was possible however because of the discovery decades ago by a mathematical prodigy by the name of Srinivas Ramanujan, a great mathematical genius of India. An unconventional genius, he had no formal training in mathematics. Recognising his talent his English boss at Madras Port Trust encouraged him to write to Prof. Hardy of Trinity College, Cambridge. He wrote a long letter with his equations which impressed Prof. Hardy and he secured him admission without necessary pre-requisites or going through the hard Tripos exam. Ramanujan surely wouldn't have made it to Trinity College if the rules were not broken for him. There, he came up with the famous Partition Theory. He went on to become one of the earliest and youngest Indians to become a Fellow of the prestigious Royal Society. When you put your Debit or Credit Card in the ATM machine and order the machine to dispense the amount of your desire, the machine divides and arranges the money before dispensing it, using Ramnujan's Partition Theory which is as follows --- A partition of a positive integer n is just an expression for n as a sum of positive integers, regardless of order. Thus p(4)=5, because 4 can be written as 1+1+1+1, 1+1+2, 2+2, 1+3 or 4. The ATM machine arranges the correct amount of money to be dispensed according to Ramanujan's Partition Theory. My salute to these two fine Gentlemen!