Roosevelt Island Chase ATM Machine Opens

Further evidence of civilization arriving at Roosevelt Island. The Chase ATM in the Duane Reade at 425 Main Street is now open. If Antarctica can have an ATM, Roosevelt Island can have a new ATM as well.

According to the NY Times the ATM machine is 40 years old.

Yes, the A.T.M. turned 40 on Wednesday, if you count from the planting of one in a north London suburb, on June 27, 1967, as The Associated Press and others did. Now one stands in Antarctica, the A.P. said.

“The A.T.M. deserves an enormous amount of credit–or blame–for the way we live today,” Fortune magazine wrote in a meditation on the machine. But “it’s hard to know who to bestow it upon,” the magazine said, pointing to a debate over the father of the invention.

For its ubiquity in New York, credit is due to Walter B. Wriston, Citibank’s chairman in 1977, who placed a $100 million bet on “faceless boxes that spit out money,” an idea from his protege John S. Reed, who later led the New York Stock Exchange*.

Image is of Chase Manhattan Bank Tower from nyc-architecture.