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LICK THAT ATM: Diebold and Corning debug displays

Antimicrobial touch screens come to cash machines

Ponder, for a moment, whether the person ahead of you in the queue to use an automatic teller machine (ATM) washed their hands after their last visit to the bathroom.

What's that you say? You'll use your card instead? Can't blame you: the prospect of mashing your hands on touch-screens or buttons used by who-knows-how-many fellow members of the great unwashed can sound unappealing.

Enter glass-maker Corning and ATM-maker Diebold, who at CES 2015 announced a collaboration to fit the antimicrobial version of Gorilla Glass to cash machines.

Diebold's canned statement gives this one away with a disclaimer stating “Antimicrobial protection is limited to the glass product itself, and neither Corning nor Diebold makes any direct or implied health claims about the antimicrobial properties of the product.”

Never mind it's bollocks, the antimicrobial screen can be retrofitted to old ATMs or slotted into Diebold's current models.

The company also announced a new 550 series ATM at CES and aimed it at nations where electricity service is intermittent by packing in a battery, making solar power an option and reducing power requirements to 24v. The company says switching between power sources will come in handy in South Asia, where it reckons brownouts or blackouts happen about a third of the time. Keeping ATMs up when electricity goes down will, the company reckons, be good for developing economies. And of course for the financial institutions to which Diebold sells. ®

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