The Automatic Totalisators Chalmers Street Factory 1938

The photograph shown in the image above was donated to me by Frank Matthews, who was the last Senior Partner of Julius Poole and Gibson, George Julius' engineering consulting company. George Julius also founded Automatic Totalisators Limited. Frank also donated most of the photographs in the Photo Album of this website. Frank kept them and many more from being discarded when he retired.

Frank Matthews wrote the following about the photos in the Photo Gallery of this website relating to Chalmers Street like the one above:

There must be many building projects undertaken by Julius Poole and Gibson that have touched Totalisators. In looking at the Chalmers Street photographs I am reminded of the Dental Hospital just down the street where JP&G were involved in various iterations of structure and services design and in which Max and I were involved. In the early days I remember the trams running past there as they did our office in Castlereagh Street.

A reputable Journal contains an article on Totalisator History titled The Reign of the Totalisator. It states that the Automatic Totalisators Limited factory moved from Newtown to the southern end of the Sydney CBD in 1930 and that one of the best precision workshops in Australia was established there. This new factory in the Sydney CBD, refers to the factory building in the image above. Another article produced by Automatic Totalisators Limited and presented in the Automatic Totalisators Limited - Later ATL chapter of this website, contradicts the first article and states the factory moved here from Newtown in 1933. We have two conflicting records of when this factory started operation, 1930 and 1933. In December 2015 Narelle and I followed a lead from Diane McCarthy the treasurer of the Marrickville Heritage Society and investigated the Sydney phone books. We visited the State Library of New South Wales which had Sydney phone books on microfiche from 1889 to 1950, which was very easy to use. In the November 1933 phone book the factory was still at Newtown and in the May 1934 phone book it was at this factory in Chalmers street. Therefore the 1933 article is closest and is correct if the factory moved in the remainder of 1933 and not early 1934 before the phone book was printed. In conclusion, this factory operated from late 1933 or early 1934 until 1947 when it was moved to a custom built factory located at Nancarrow Avenue Meadowbank in Sydney. The 1947 move to the Meadowbank factory is confirmed in the Sydney phone book. The Meadowbank factory continued to operate until it was vacated after AWA Limited, another iconic Australian electronics engineering company that I had previously worked for, purchased the company in 1991.

William Johnson, a long serving engineer and manager with Automatic Totalisators Limited, who spent long periods overseas on iconic projects like Caracas, spoke to me about this image as he recognised some of the faces in it. William related the following information. The man in the first standing row, wearing a white dust coat, with his left hand in his pocket and hair parted on the right hand side and wearing a tie, is his father, another William Johnson. He said his father was probably a Leading Hand when this photograph was taken and became a Shop Foreman during the war years.

As William Johnson Jr. has identified his father William Johnson Sr. in the photograph above I have included the following Automatic Totalisators Limited letter that William gave me relating to his father. In my introduction above of William Johnson Jr., I wrote that he spent long periods overseas on iconic projects and the same applies to his father. The 1951 company letter below relates to passport Visa endorsement and arrangements for William Johnson Sr. to visit the United States for an extended period, as a company engineer supervising installations in Cleveland Ohio, Las Vegas Nevada and Moyock North Carolina. William Johnson Sr. was accompanied by his family on this project and William Johnson Jr., as a young lad assisted his father with the installations. The details relating to this installation can be read in the Automatic Totalisators in America chapter of this website. To read this, click on the image above, scroll down to the bottom of the loaded page and select the Go to the index button in the Navigation Bar at the bottom of the page. Now select the mentioned chapter in the Secondly section of the index and scroll down to the heading Las Vegas related by William Johnson Jr.

Note that the address for Automatic Totalisators Limited in the letter below is at the Meadowbank factory the one after the Chalmers St. factory in the image above. The letter mentions British Commonwealth Pacific Airlines. This was an airline based in New South Wales Australia focused on flights across the Pacific Ocean, which started operating DC4 aircraft and by the time of this letter was operating DC6s. The letter mentions a period of nine months in the United States, however it ended up more like two years.

ATL letter re William Sidney Johnson travel to USA

William Johnson Jr. also said Joe Norris who has his arms crossed, is standing in the same row as his father in the image at the top of this page. Peter Collier ex Automatic Totalisators Limited Chief Engineer in Victoria, confirms this in an email on 5 January 2016, when he wrote In the photo of the 1938 staff I think that the person standing to the right of Keith with arms folded is Joe Norris. I remember Joe, he visited Brisbane on several occasions during the period after the PDP11 systems started operations in 1979. I always enjoyed talking to him and Norm Noble as they both tended to visit at the same time.

William is not sure but thinks the third person to the left of Joe in the image at the top of this page, with his left hand in his pocket and wearing a dust coat and tie is probably Don Hardy. I have compared this person identified by William, who is the third man standing from the left hand side of the image at the top of this page, who towers over the first two men who are standing on the road and not the kerb, with a known photo of Don Hardy standing next to some paper tape reader and punch equipment, which is in the first part of the Photo Gallery of this website. I think William is right, this is Don Hardy, as he looks the same to me as the known image of Don. William's father was Don's best man at his wedding which William thinks was held at Durban.

William also said the man standing in the back row second from the right with his right hand on the shoulder of the man in front of him and his left hand across the shoulder of the man on his left, whose mouth is partially obscured by the man in front, is Alan Lakeman. Alan was William's boss, under Val Adams, who was the Engineering Manager of Harold Park. Alan is mentioned in several pages on this website. The young fellow seated in the middle of the front row is possibly Jimmy McGeeky, who tragically passed away not long after in a car accident. The man kneeling in the front row third from the right is Bob Williams, he was a despatch clerk. The young fellow standing in the middle of the first standing row, is possibly Keith Dodwell. The previous quote from Peter Collier, In the photo of the 1938 staff I think that the person standing to the right of Keith with arms folded is Joe Norris is an extract from an email about the news that Keith Dodwell had passed away and consequently also acts to confirm that William is correct again, Keith Dodwell is the youth in the middle of the standing row in the image at the top of this page.

Since retirement, Narelle and I experience an inordinate amount of coincidences and many are associated with totalisator history. It is now November 2019 and I have just added the above ATL letter from Bill Johnson. Yesterday I realised that Peter Collier's quote mentioned in the last paragraph also confirms that a youthful Keith Dodwell is in the image at the top of this page. As a result I added the last sentence in the previous paragraph. I was reminded that Keith had passed away a few years ago and that our lives have been so hectic that I had not thought about it since. I was slightly surprised when my computer announced the arrival of an Email a minute or so after I uploaded this new version to the Internet that confirmed Keith was indeed in the staff image above. The Email arrived at 10:14PM on Black Friday 29th November, as I was preparing to shut the system down for the night. I changed my mind and decided to read the email before shutting down as I was incredulous after reading the subject which read Remembering Keith Dodwell!!! The body of the email showed an image of a burning candle with the words Remembering above and Keith Dodwell below, followed by Dear Family and Friends of Keith Dodwell, followed by more information soliciting new entries in Keith's memorial guest book starting with the sentence Being remembered matters! I had no idea that my work on this page was just over a day prior to the anniversary of his passing. The words Being remembered matters are of particular significance to me as my mother said when she knew she was terminally ill, no one really dies until the last person who remembers them dies!

I remember Keith Dodwell very well. I met him when I visited Autotote in Philadelphia on a business trip. He was very hospitable to me and my wife Narelle. Keith has achieved something that I find quite remarkable. He served 60 years with what is essentially the same company, Automatic Totalisators Limited in Australia and then Atusa/Autotote the subsidiary of Automatic Totalisators Limited in America, starting at age 14 and finishing at 74. Keith would have been around the age of 14 in the image at the top of this page. Keith was instrumental in establishing the American subsidiary ATUSA an acronym for Automatic Totalisators USA which later changed its name to Autotote which is a contraction of Automatic Totalisators. Keith ended up Executive Vice President of Autotote having started as an Apprentice Toolmaker at Automatic Totalisators Limited. There are some comments from Keith in the Caracas a latterday Julius tote installation chapter of this website. Navigation details to this page later.

The small text in the top right hand corner of the letter above consists of four lines that read CITY OFFICE, PREMIER HOUSE - 5 PHILLIP STREET - SYDNEY, N.S.W. - BW 4357. I find the name Premier House interesting as Premier is the name George attributed to his totalisator product. There are many references to this in old company documents. For instance The Premier (Julius) Automatic Totalisator and The Premier Totalisator or just plain Premier Totalisator a multitude of references to which are to be found on this website. I wonder if Premier House was named after this product or vice versa or if it is just coincidence.

The small text in the top left hand corner of the letter above consists of two lines that read TELEGRAPHIC ADDRESS - "TOTALLING," SYDNEY. For those who have not heard of a Telegraph, it was a method of transmitting text messages during the Morse Code era. I also find this text in the letter interesting so far as the word TOTALLING is concerned. Totalling Mechanisms Ltd was a company formed in 1911 which was the forerunner of Automatic Totalisators Limited formed in 1917. It seems to me that the appearance of the word Totalling in the telegraphic address is a flash back reference to this company. It is possible that the word Totalisator had not yet entered the English language from the French Totalisateur at the time Totalling Mechanisms Ltd was named.

The letter above is signed by the Industrial Officer D. Stewart. Danny Alexander, an apprentice at Automatic Totalisators Limited in the factory shown at the top of this page during world war 2, informs us in an interview he gave which appears on this website that D. Stewart is Dave Stewart. Danny's interview can be read by clicking on the image at the top of this page and then selecting the second image thumbnail below the one corresponding to the image at the top of this page, which has the associated descriptive text starting with This is an image of the Automatic Totalisators Limited factory at Chalmers Street. Then scroll down to the heading Danny Alexander - Automatic Totalisators Limited Apprentice.

William also sent me a Trove Digitised Newspapers link showing a Sydney Morning Herald newspaper page 3 of 44 dated 16 June 1936. On this page there is an article titled THREE NEW STORIES Automatic Totalisators Limited. This article describes the addition of three new stories to the existing three story Automatic Totalisators factory at 182 to 194 Chalmers Street. The best view of this factory is in the image below, although it is after the addition of the extra three stories. I had no idea this factory was so massive nor that it had undergone such major expansion.

The complete Automatic Totalisators Limited factory at Chalmers Street can be seen in the image below. The staff image at the top of this page was taken in Belvoir Street, the street that runs up the left hand side of the factory building in the image below. The doorway with the gate in the background of the image at the top of this page can be seen at the far left hand side of the factory building in the image below. William Johnson Jr. also recollected his father showing him this factory in the image below when he was a young boy. He also remembered that the building had an advertisement for Oil of Ulan on it.

The Chalmers Street Factory

Image Source: State Library of New South Wales [Home and Away - 35251]

William later sent me an electronic copy of the 1936 Flinders Ward rate book pages 1 to 89 provided by the City of Sydney archives. It led to a sequence of events resulting in the realisation that the ATL Chalmers Street factory building was still in existence and it also raised a new question. This rate book indicates the Owner or Landlord is Automated(sic) Totlisators Limited and amongst other things that it has one floor and three rooms. Well that leaves a screaming question! How did this one floor building, become three for the additional three stories to be added to, resulting in a building with six floors? Perhaps the other two stories are recorded elsewhere! The column in the rate book that immediately follows the No. Of Floors column is the No. Of Rooms column which is recorded as 3. Just speculating, three rooms would make for a very small factory, what if 3 should have been in the previous column recording the number of floors and the actual number of rooms has been omitted?

William provided sufficient information for me to deduce that the factory building still existed. The Rate Book document William sent, showed 182/194 in the No. of House column for Automatic Totalisators in the Chalmers Street entries. I noticed each entry had a Remarks column at the end of each line. The entry prior to the entry for Automatic Totalisators was the Commonwealth Government Repatriation Department building at 168/180 Chalmers Street. In the Remarks column for this entry, I read the text Here Belvoir Street, which I took to mean, that government building was on the corner of Chalmers Street and Belvoir Street. That meant that the Automatic Totalisators factory at 182/194 Chalmers Street had to be on the same street intersection on the other side of Belvoir Street. A check with Internet city maps confirmed it was there. It was easy to see that the present day Internet Street View building and the one in the image above and the Sydney Morning Herald article artist's impression of this building, were probably all of the same building. William also sent an image of a photograph in the State Library of NSW collection, of this whole factory building when it was still the Automatic Totalisators factory. That photograph in the library's collection was proof positive that the building standing today is definitely the old Automatic Totalisators factory. I have since gained approval to include that photograph in this website and it is shown in the image above titled The Chalmers Street factory.

There are full sized images of this factory building in the Photo Gallery of this website. To view these, return to the photo gallery directory by clicking on the image at the top of this page and select one of the two following image thumbnails of this building. The first image shows the ex factory building in 2014 and the second is a full sized rendition of the State Library of New South Wales photograph shown above. The second image file contains a lot of additional information regarding this ex Automatic Totalisators Limited factory.

Neville Mitchell, the best ATL company historian I know wrote the following about the staff image at the top of this page, the Chalmers Street factory and the move to Meadowbank:

I have spent some time scanning the faces of the workers outside the factory I think this was Chalmers street. I cannot see anyone there that I knew at Meadowbank. Neville changed his mind when William put names to the faces of several iconic Automatic Totalisators employees in this image. When Neville removed 30 years of ageing from his recollection of several of the people mentioned he too recognised them.

When the Meadowbank plant opened I would imagine a lot of workers found it difficult to get to it from the Eastern Suburbs. There were many men there in 1962 that were ex WW2 forces both Australian and British, who lived locally in Housing Commission or war service homes. In 1948 there was many new factories opening up in the Eastern Suburbs, Morris / Leyland, CIG, Stromberg Carlson, Magnavox, Chrysler, GMH, Graden Gears, Ansett Transport [buses], Feltex Carpets, to name a few. Getting a new job was not too difficult. And besides the Chalmers Street factory had a few pubs nearby where it is a good mile from the Meadowbank factory to Mary's Pub in West Ryde.

Neville also recalls a good time had in the USA with both William Johnson, who provided information presented above and Keith Dodwell who is in the image at the top of this page and Kieth's wife Mari Dodwell who Neville refers to as Mary:

I was talking to Bill about our time together at ATUSA, we had some great times with Keith and Mary Dodwell. Sailing on their yacht on Chesapeake Bay, dining at Du Pont restaurants, and in between doing some work.

There is more information about Julius Poole and Gibson as well as Frank Matthews and Max Sherrard, mentioned at the beginning of this page, in the Sir George Julius chapter of this website. To read this, click on the image at the top of this page, then scroll to the bottom of the loaded page and select the Go to the index button in the Nav Bar at the bottom. Finally, select the Sir George Julius chapter in the Firstly section of the index and scroll down to the heading Julius Poole & Gibson The Original Partners, which is the start of the Julius Poole & Gibson section.

P.S. Before you ask the question, Why has he not ascertained who owned the vehicle on the right hand side of the image at the top of this page as the registration number is clearly legible, William Johnson has already raised that question. At the time William suggested finding out, the idea had already crossed my mind. In February 2017 I eventually found the time to do something about it. I was informed that Roads and Maritime Services are legally bound not to release information relating to vehicle registration unless authorised. The information can be requested via the Government Information Public Access (GIPA) Act. This incurs a fee and there is no guarantee that any information will be provided. Additionally, the GIPA Department have advised that they only keep records for 10 years and anything prior to that is very limited anyway. I have taken this to mean that it is very unlikely that they would have any information on a car in a photo that is 79 years old, consequently I have not pursued it any further.