The E-Sylum:  Volume 11, Number 14, April 6, 2008, Article 28

BRITISH ATM GOES HAYWIRE, DISPENSING DOUBLE CASH

[Reuters published the following article about a haywire
automated teller machine. -Editor]

A British cash machine became a big hit this week after it
started paying out twice as much money as it should.

The ATM, outside a supermarket in they city of Hull in
northern England, began spewing out double the money Tuesday
afternoon and continued doing so for several hours, drawing
a crowd of hundreds eager to cash in on the mistake.

Those requesting the maximum daily withdrawal of 300 pounds
($600) were being given 600 pounds and a receipt for 300.

"People were calling their mates up and telling them to get
down there," the Hull Daily Mail quoted a passer-by as saying.

After several hours the machine finally ran out of money.

To read the complete article, see:
Full Story

[So what happened?  Did someone load 20-pound notes in the
10-pound slot?  Did the onboard computer slip a binary digit?
What makes this incident interesting is not so much that an
error occurred but that how rare such incidents are given
the billions of transactions handled yearly by ATMs worldwide.
-Editor]

  Wayne Homren, Editor

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