Donald C. Wetzel (born January 3, 1929) is an American businessman known for holding the USA patent to the automatic teller machine. Born in New Orleans, Louisiana, he graduated from Jesuit High School (New Orleans) in 1947 and got a B.Sc. in foreign trade from

Loyola University New Orleans Loyola University New Orleans is a Private university, private Jesuit university in New Orleans, New Orleans, Louisiana. Originally established as Loyola College in 1904, the institution was chartered as a university in 1912. It bears the name o ...

(1951). He was also a professional in minor-league baseball for the

New York Giants The New York Giants are a professional American football team based in the New York metropolitan area. The Giants compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) East division. ...

farm system (1948–50), and began working for IBM in his hometown (1951–55) before moving to Fort Worth, Texas as branch manager (1955) and as consultant to the banking industry in San Antonio (1956–1963) and Houston (1963–65). His engineering fame came while working as vice president company Docutel Corporation of

Irving, Texas Irving is a city in the U.S. state of Texas. Located in Dallas County, it is also an inner ring suburb of Dallas. The city of Irving is part of the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. According to a 2019 estimate from the United States Census Bureau, ...

which he joined in 1968. He designed the ''Docuteller'' machine (1968) that was first deployed at

Chemical Bank Chemical Bank was a bank with headquarters in New York City from 1824 until 1996. At the end of 1995, Chemical was the third-largest bank in the U.S., with about $182.9 billion in assets and more than 39,000 employees around the world. Beginning ...

in New York City in 1969 and was patented in 1973. Later he founded three financial systems companies, the Financial Systems & Equipment Corporation (1973), Electronic Banking Systems, Inc. (1979) and Autosig Systems, Inc. (1982) from which he retired in 1989, still living in Dallas.

Awards

* IEEE Simon Ramo Medal (2006)biography
from IEEE

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wetzel, Donald American inventors Jesuit High School (New Orleans) alumni People from New Orleans Loyola University New Orleans alumni Living people People from Dallas 1929 births