London, Dec. 31: Here?s a question for your New Year quiz? We all use it and there are nearly a million of them scattered across the world but what does ?ATM? stand for?

A good man to ask is John Shepherd-Barron, a 79-year-old Scotsman, who was today honoured by the Queen with an Order of the British Empire for inventing the ATM ? acronym for Automated Teller Machine ? nearly 40 years ago.

Some others have claimed the credit for inventing the ATM but Shepherd-Barron has certainly had a hand in devising the equipment that has been reproduced across the world.

No one knows how many there are, though one estimate suggests 800,000.

Reacting with typical Scottish bluntness to the OBE at his home in Tain, Ross-shire, where he has lived for 15 years with his wife, Shepherd-Barron grunted: ?It was a bit late, but better late then never. It is very nice to have it, but it has taken about 40 years.?

He was not in the mood to acknowledge someone else had invented the ATM.

?There were some complainers in the US who claimed they made it first but the Guinness Book of Inventions claimed that I was the first,? he pointed out with disarming lack of modesty. It was a little like asking Marconi if he had ever heard of one Jagadish Chandra Bose.

?Perhaps that is why it took so long,? he ventured.

Recalling events from four decades ago, he said: ?I took the idea to Barclays and they said: ?If you can do it, we will buy it.? The Americans were not interested, they said it was a crazy European idea.?

Shepherd-Barron added: ?I like to think that my invention will encourage other inventors, I always hope to encourage people. The thing that I have done obviously became an important feature of international banking. It has everyone in the world working in the same way.?

Shepherd-Barron was a parachutist with the 6th Airborne Division of the army during World War II when he was sent to Edinburgh University to study. After the war, he moved to Cambridge where he read economics and law before joining De La Rue instruments as a management trainee based in Surrey.

He spent his career with the company, later working as chairman for the armoured trucks division and establishing the first night parcel service.

Shepherd-Barron devised the ATM when he became irritated at not being able to get at his own money at weekends. In 1967, as managing director of De La Rue Instruments, he installed the world?s first ATM at Barclays Bank at Enfield, London.

The machine, the De La Rue Automatic Cash System, took in cheques impregnated with Carbon 14 which were bought in advance from a bank teller and exchanged them for cash.