Article

Remembering Docutel

Like the dinosaur, a brash Texas company called Docutel once ruled the ATM universe. Some of the same traits that doomed the dinosaur -- big, unwieldy and not very well-equipped for the future -- also described Docutel's ATMs. by Kevin Gibson, contributing writer

August 8, 2000

Sharon Abrahamson wasn't too surprised when, some 15 years ago, she was called to investigate a problem with an ATM owned by the Seattle bank where she worked. The ATM industry was only beginning to take off and the machines, which had been manufactured by the Texas company Docutel, tended to break down. But when she arrived and found that an unhappy customer had rigged a chain to his truck to rip the machine out of the bank's wall, surprise was indeed one of the emotions she felt. "Finding it in the middle of the street when I got there was kind of exciting," said Abrahamson, who now works for Respond Inc., also in Seattle. "He spent a lot of time hooking his tow truck up to it and pulling it right out of the wall." Abrahamson discovered that the machine had not only failed to dispense money, it had also captured the man's card, which prompted his rather extreme act of revenge. "That's pretty drastic," she said. "The bad thing about it was that since his card was captured, we knew he was the last customer to use the machine." Bob Heckman, a former vice president of sales and marketing for Docutel, remembers the story of a disgruntled ATM user in Houston who, after being denied access to cash, took out a shotgun and blasted the machine. "It didn't hurt the ATM," Heckman said, "but the ricochet must have hurt." Such was life for those who dealt with Docutel machines for a living. Docutel, based in Dallas, was among the first in the U.S. to manufacture ATMs, and in its heyday of the early 1970s was a major player and a pioneer in the industry. But being a pioneer means learning lessons -- sometimes the hard way. In the beginning The president of Docutel was a guy named Jack Meredith, the brother of then-Dallas Cowboys quarterback and eventual Monday Night Football announcer "Dandy" Don Meredith. Del Tonguette, a former Docutel customer who sometimes accompanied Docutel salesmen on calls, recalled recently that the company made it almost imperative for bank presidents to come to Dallas so they could employ the practically fool-proof Docutel sales pitch. "You spent two hours in the factory but spent a whole bunch of time meeting Don Meredith, the Dallas Cowboys, the cheerleaders, going to the finest restaurants in 'The Big D,'" Tonguette said. "When we took you through the factory, we had several of the ATMs with signs that said 'These machines reserved for' and the name of your company." The first bank with an ATM delivered by Docutel was City National Bank (now Bank One) in Columbus, Ohio. Bob Drennan, now a consultant to the financial industry, made the sale. "I had heard about Docutel," said Drennan, who in 1971 worked for Recognition Equipment Inc., from which Docutel was an offshoot, "but it was always kind of a joke." Drennan left his REI position that year and received an offer from another company -- an offer he planned to accept. He had already committed to an interview with a Docutel representative in Chicago, however, so he went. He was immediately hooked. "I loved it," Drennan said. "I liked the guy, I liked what he was talking about. I came back to REI and (his employer) said, 'You may go down the tubes but you're going to have a hell of a fun time doing it.' It was fun. It was totally different. We were inventing things as we went along." Inventiveness and fun indeed turned out to be hallmarks for Docutel, along with a lot of quick thinking. Drennan began selling back in a time when most bank executives were hearing about ATMs and cash dispensers for the first time, and reactions were, well, mixed. On his Web site, he relates the reaction of one banker who summarized and regurgitated Drennan's sales pitch thusly: "Let me get this straight. You want me to poke a hole in the wall of my branch. Then you want me to stick a one-ton machine through that wall. Then that machine is going to spit money out onto the sidewalk. Do I have it right so far?" It wasn't always easy, even for Jack Meredith. Drennan related a joint sales call with Meredith in which they tried to convince a Bank of America executive vice president to get into the ATM business to attract new customers. The man listened politely, according to Drennan, and then asked his assistant, an attractive young woman, to come into the office. She walked in and was asked to do a routine task, upon which she smiled and left. Drennan said, "The executive vice president turned to Jack and myself and stated, 'When your ATM can replace her, the Bank of America will be interested.'" As word spread, however, more and more banks wanted ATMs. Docutel took to the road, and Tonguette was on more than a few of those sales trips. He recalled one in which the only place in the bank large enough to hold one of the early units, known as a T3, was a downstairs conference room. In the process of moving it, he and his colleagues proceeded to drop the extremely heavy machine down the stairs. It didn't shatter -- the T3s were made of steel -- but when the time came for a demo, the ATM wouldn't work. Thank goodness for the slide show. There were, however, times when it didn't matter if the machine worked or not. Don Wetzel, who is credited with being the ATM's creator for Docutel, in a 1995 interview with the National Museum of American History, told of a sales pitch to an Atlanta bank in the early days. The bank executives agreed to come to Dallas to see the machine work and, lo and behold, it didn't. Wetzel took them into the conference room and gave the execs a history lesson on Docutel and the concept of the ATM in order to give the technicians time to fix the machine. One tech was to signal to Wetzel periodically as to whether the ATM was working or not. The history lesson went on for about an hour and a half, Wetzel said, until finally one of the bank execs said, "I know more about Docutel now than you do. This machine isn't working, right?" Wetzel 'fessed up, but the VIPs wanted to see the ATM anyway. They went back to Atlanta, and two days later the bank ordered five. It must have been even worse during public demonstrations. There were plenty of those as banks bought ATMs and wanted to show them off in order to drum up business. Heckman related a story from Corpus Christi, Texas, about the public announcement of the first ATM at the biggest bank in town. With TV cameras rolling, the bank president dramatically inserted his own ATM card into the machine, all the while boasting about the wonders of automated banking, not to mention the forward-thinking approach by his bank and its board of directors. "The ATM swallowed the card," Heckman said, "made some non-standard noises, and promptly returned the president's card -- very bent and very torn. As he looked at it in horror, the announcer said, 'Well, I guess there are a few bugs to be worked out.' "I think the phrase 'Not a happy camper' was invented at that moment." Heckman looks back on those years with fondness, however, in part because of the pioneering spirit of Docutel and its employees. Trying to convince the bankers of America they needed ATMs was an adventure, given that a machine might cost $35,000, plus necessitated knocking a hole in the wall of the bank for the purpose of dispensing money. "As one bank president put it," Heckman said, "'Son, I'm trying to get money in the bank, not give it out through the wall.'" All good things must end By the end of Docutel's run, other companies had surpassed their predecessor in the realm of technology, and slowly but surely the remaining original machines were phased out. Abrahamson recalls the 1984 deinstallation of the last 200 Docutel machines from her Seattle bank. After years of stuffing money into envelopes by hand for dispensing, making late-night service calls, ironing money to ensure it wouldn't stick (after the envelope method was discarded) and rescuing captured cards, Abrahamson and her fellow employees had a party in which everyone went at one of the old machines with a sledgehammer. Each person was encouraged to destroy the part of the ATM that gave them with the most nightmares. "I went for the card reader," Abrahamson said, "because it invariably would not return cards. It would capture them, and I would have these angry customers waiting for me when I would get to my (service) call." Much to her surprise, just a couple of years ago she got a call from a Seattle bank that had bought some refurbished Docutel machines and had found her business card stuck inside one. They called her, mostly to see if she had any service manuals (apparently, the machines weren't working properly). She helped them out, but the irony made her chuckle. The puzzling question: Why would a bank want to buy old Docutel machines? "I don't have any idea," she said. Next:The rise and fall of Docutel -- what went right and what went wrong.