Vatican City ATM displays instructions in Latin

Seth Schoen snapped this Vatican City ATM that displays instructions in Latin.

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE: Gadgets • happy mutants • italy • language • Old school • photos

More at Boing Boing

Eurovision 2013: An American in London

The technology that links taxonomy and Star Trek

jerwin

I like the skimmer. Very cleverly concealed.
- lknope
  
  Caveat emptor.
http://www.youtube.com/user/Freethinkersanon Christopher

And here I thought three years of Latin in high school and two more in college would never do me any good in the real world…
- http://www.facebook.com/csismeiro Carlos Sismeiro
  
  The Vatican is in the real world?
  
  Someone should tell them.
Rich Keller

With all the illuminated manuscripts in their collections as examples, they chose that font?
- lostmongoose
  
  That clipart is straight out of Office 95, as well.
- http://twitter.com/RVLouie Rick Louie
  
  Comic Sans FTW!!
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that these ATMs aren’t actually made in the basement of the Sistine Chapel, so the Holy Father doesn’t have a completely free choice of design elements.
  
  Which mostly makes me wonder if you could hack an ATM to provide alternative messages. Somebody should get on that.
  - Bevatron Repairman
    
    If these are in the same place as 10 years ago, you can find these in the Vatican post office. Sort of on the right front corner of the plaza. They had Latin then, but I chickened out (I once decided to brave an ATM in Seoul in Korean and ended up with W900,000 in my pocket).
    - Colin Spitler
      
      I had the same problem only once in S. Korea when I lived there, so I quickly learned the numbering system for larger numbers, which is essentially based on multiples of 10,000 (만), so 90 만원 is 90 x 10,000 won = lots more money than you normally would withdraw at an ATM. And even if you want that much, fortunately they have 5
      만원 (50,000 won) notes now.
  - travtastic
    
    You probably need access to the internals, behind the locks. Although being that a lot of them are from Diebold and the like, the firmware is IP. I know there are various ways to get into soda machines from button combos, but I doubt an ATM would allow root access from outside.
    - Guest
      
      I’ve heard Diebolds are nigh unhackable
      - Little John
        
        As unhackable as their voting machines?
http://profiles.google.com/nora.sawyer Nora Sawyer

Me Hercule!
http://www.facebook.com/stanestane Stanislav Stankovic

In comic sans none the less
http://artdonovan.typepad.com Art

I love the comments about the ugly and most inappropriate font!

Good observation Stanislav, Rich and Mongoose! :)
Stooge

I still prefer the Cockney ones.
- Wreckrob8
  
  Quid pro quo.
- franko
  
  wow, that’s hilarious. now i want one in droogy.
theophrastvs

Marcus 10:25
facilius est camelum per foramen acus transire quam divitem intrare in regnum Dei

(y’see it’s the intersection of the holy Roman and moola … ah bene…)
http://www.geekforce.com Hugh Johnson

Will it dispense indulgences?
My favorite ATM of all time is in the basement of The Cathedral of Learning on the University of Pittsburgh campus. The machine has options for at least 8 languages, and I think one of them is Swahili.
Alan Olsen

The Terms of Service are in ancient Greek.
- Rich Keller
  
  And you have to enter you PIN in Roman Numerals.
- dragonfrog
  
  And the maintenance manual is in Aramaic.
- retepslluerb
  
  And the whole thing is written in Vatical.
  
  Oh noes, I just noticed that this was apparently never translated into English.
  
  http://www.leo.org/information/freizeit/fun/Vatical.html
  
  Can this be?
OriGuy

I used one on the island of St. Martin that had instructions in French, Dutch, English, and Papiamento (a Caribbean creole). It dispensed dollars, francs, or Netherlands Antilles guilders.

The Vatican City one should dispense denarii and sestertii, as well as euros.
- twianto
  
  Yeah, ATMs with 4 or 5 languages are pretty common, as are ones that dispense three currencies in some areas (certain regions of Turkey come to mind).
  
  Edit: and then there countries with lots of official languages like South Africa where some ATMs feature 8 or 10 (or whatever the maximum number of buttons per screen is) languages.
  - OriGuy
    
    That was about 10 years ago, and the first one like that that I had seen. Now that I think about it, my local ATMs have about a dozen languages, in nearly as many scripts. Only dollars, though.
Jeff Grygny

That hand has a surprisingly suggestive heel– or maybe not, considering it’s the vatican
- RobbieDolev
  
  If Freud was alive today, he’d be smiling at that.
http://twitter.com/digitalArtform Joseph Francis

The motto of my bank account is E Pluribus Unum.
Shinkuhadoken

Still doesn’t beat Google in Klingon.
http://dailygrail.com/ Red Pill Junkie

Quo Vadis, salary? :(
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=507190600 Edward Borrego

I was shown one of those Latin ATMs by the man who translated it into Latin, Father Reginald Foster. If you want to learn about a really interesting man you should watch this YouTube clip. A Catholic priest that never wears a collar: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inQ6CWx7V2c
- MelSkunk
  
  Wow! Boingboing should cover this guy in his own post. What a fascinating story!
http://arvintumbles.tumblr.com/ Arvin Alba

Comic Sans. <3
http://twitter.com/CthulhuTV Jim Perry

Wow! That takes me back to 1999.