Automated teller machine inventor John Shepherd-Barron came up with the revolutionary concept while sitting in the bathtub agonizing over the fact that his bank branch was closed on weekends.

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Automated teller machine inventor John Shepherd-Barron came up with the revolutionary concept while sitting in the bathtub agonizing over the fact that his bank branch was closed on weekends. He realized that if massive vending machines could reliably dispense chocolate bars to hungry pedestrians at any hour of the day or night, there was no logical reason a similar machine couldn't be engineered to spit out standardized wads of physical cash. He successfully pitched his brilliant idea to Barclays in 1967 over a quick gin and tonic, fundamentally transforming the modern banking landscape and permanently ending the necessity of rushing to the bank before three in the afternoon. Tragically, he never officially patented the underlying technology because doing so would have required publicly disclosing the security codes, meaning he revolutionized global finance without ever becoming a billionaire off the greatest vending machine ever built