This history page contains a photograph which is one of several belonging to the photo gallery pages which are part of several technology and company history pages relating to the invention of the world's first automatic totalizator in 1913 and Automatic Totalisators Limited, the Australian company founded in 1917 to develop, manufacture and export these systems.
An Old 1930 ATL company promotion extract
This page shows an extract from a 1930 company/product promotion document titled The PREMIER (JULIUS) AUTOMATIC TOTALISATOR. I have deduced that it was written in 1930 as there is a table of installations in this document covering pages 22 and 23, and the latest installations recorded are the Greyhound Racing Association, Harringay, England and the Greyhound Racing Association, Edinburgh, Scotland both in 1930. There are two add-on pages glued to the bottom of these pages listing installations up to 1932, however these were clearly added after publication. This document in general and the page presented here is a good example of advertising content, not only prior to the advent of the personal computer, with all the computer aided applications, but prior to the advent of the digital computer itself. It is lengthy for a marketing/sales/advertising document, with this page being number 20 out of 25 pages.
More after the image...
Click on the image to go back to the photo gallery
The Typical "Premier" Totalisator Installations page
There are text extracts from The PREMIER (JULIUS) AUTOMATIC TOTALISATOR document in several images in the photo gallery pages of this website. The extracts begin in the image page in the photo gallery directory section titled Ellerslie Racecourse New Zealand 1913 with the associated text starting The Tote House at the Ellerslie Racecourse Auckland... Ellerslie is the suburb in Auckland where the Auckland Racing Club is located.
Following are extracts from a table in this company document identifying the installations relating to the customers identified in the image above. Installation number one, at the Auckland Racing Club is significant as it is considered to be the world's first automatic totalisator.
The Premier Totalisator
| No of | Year of | Where Installed | No of |
|---|
| Install | Install | | Issuing |
|---|
| ation | ation | | Machines |
|---|
| | | |
| 1 | 1913 | Auckland Racing Club, Auckland' New Zealand | 30 |
| 6 | 1918 | Rosehill Race Club, Sydney' New South Wales | 43 |
| 8 | 1918 | Auckland Racing Club, Auckland' New Zealand | 58 |
| 16 | 1922 | Auckland Racing Club, Auckland' New Zealand | 26 |
| 24 | 1926 | Singapore Turf Club, Singapore, Federated Malay States. | 16 |
| 30 | 1928 | Societe d'Encouragement pour l'amelioration des Races de Chevaux en France, Longchamps, Paris | 273 |
I have added the emphasis to the 273 Ticket Issuing Machines at Longchamps. This was the world's largest totalisator for some years. This Julius Tote took the title away from the Julius Tote at the Western India Turf Club in Bombay India and later lost it to the Julius Tote at White City Stadium London England.
There are four Win and Place Julius tote indicators on display in the four external tote house views in this advertising document page shown in the image above. Prior to 1927, Julius totalisators displayed the grand total investment on each runner in the Win and Place pools as well as the grand totals for these pools. In 1927 George Julius invented the world's first odds computer and Julius totes after that time started displaying odds instead of runner grand totals.
Sir George Julius made comments in a 1932 article, which appeared in the Gippsland Times Newspaper relating to the invention of the odds indicator. The content of this article is made available by the National Library of Australia on its Trove website with the following details:
1932 'HOW THE AUTOMATIC TOTALISATOR WAS INVENTED', Gippsland Times (Vic. : 1861 - 1954), 7 January, p. 3. , viewed 20 May 2016, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article62691937
Sir George's statements about odds indication extracted from this article are:
In recent years, however, and particularly after a visit to England, I came to the conclusion that the perfect tote should do more than indicate the number of tickets sold, as by stopping the recording at that spot, it left the investor to calculate from the numbers what dividend he was likely to get.
Recently I have been able to add to the original patents further mechanism, which is very simple in detail, and which picks up the records of the number of tickets sold, deducts the Government tax and club percentage, and, continually divides the pool so obtained by the number of tickets sold on each horse.
This makes it possible to indicate to the public the odds on any runner at an instant during the betting, and so relieves the investor of the necessity of making any calculations.
The complete transcript of the Gippsland Times article titled How the Automatic Totalisator was Invented appears on this website in the Mechanical Aids to Calculation chapter. To view this, click on the image above. Scroll to the bottom of the page and select the Go to the index menu option in the Nav Bar and select the Mechanical Aids to Calculation chapter.
- Thanks to Mike Bell, an ex ATL Manager and Programmer for the electronic copy of the company sales brochure titled The PREMIER (JULIUS) AUTOMATIC TOTALISATOR
- Thanks to the National Library of Australia for their Trove project, which makes articles like HOW THE AUTOMATIC TOTALISATOR WAS INVENTED, available to the public. To return something for the great privilege of being able to use these articles, I have corrected the character recognition software renditions of the newspaper articles on the Trove Website, of every article I have used on this website. This particular newspaper article, which had significant fading in multiple sections of it, caused significant difficulty for the character recognition software. After making a significant amount of corrections, on looking at the edit log, I noticed that a prior editor, who remained anonymous, had already made significant corrections prior to mine. Our combined effort has produced a text rendition that I think is true to the original newspaper article. Thanks to the previous editor for making my task easier.