You walk into your Bank's ATM kiosk
and swipe your card. You then punch in a 4 PIN
code to authenticate yourself and proceed to
withdraw money. You may have been doing this
mechanically since the day ATM was introduced but
have you given a thought why ATM PINs have a 4
digit code? No! Then read on..
Automated Teller Machines (ATM) were first
introduced in 1967 and now have emerged as a
best option to disburse cash. Instead of visiting
your bank and waiting in a long queue to withdraw
money, you just have to swipe your ATM card,
punch in your secret 4 digit PIN and take away the
money you require.
But if someone was to find or steal your card, the
only barrier protecting your money is your 4-digit
ATM PIN. Ever wondered why most PINs have only
4 digits? Given that an ATM dishes out money
wouldnt the manufacturers of ATMS have been
wiser to introduce a longish PIN say six digit or
eight digit one.
Isn’t that why our email passwords
are also expected to be 6 letters or more?
You see there is a bit of story behind it. ATM was
invented by a wellknown Scottish inventor John
Adrian Shepherd-Barron, the man who pioneered
the development of the ATM machine. Barron was
born in Shillong and was son to a Wimbledon ladies
doubles champion, Dorothy Barron.
When testing
out his invention, Barron had also proposed a 6-
digit PIN.
However, the first person to use his invention was
his wife, Caroline. We all know that behind every
successful man is a woman, and Caroline
apparently rejected the idea of using a six code PIN
for her husband’s invention because she could only
remember the numbers up to four.
When Barron came up with the idea when he
realised that he could remember his six-figure army
number. But he decided to check that with his wife,
Caroline.
“Over the kitchen table, she said she could only
remember four figures, so because of her, four
figures became the world standard,” he laughs.
Reportedly, 6 numbers stringed together were too
much information for her to recall.
Although, there are many banks nowadays that
offer 6 digit PINs for security purposes, shouldn’t
those of us using 4 digit PINs be thanking Caroline?
It gets tough to recall those 4 digits at times,
imagine what 6 or more would do to us
Credits____Vijay Prabhu@ Techworm.net
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