| "We need to be aware of our engineering heroes ..." - Professor Trevor Cole - Sydney University |
An Electro Mechanical Shaft Adder circa 1926
| Doron Swade writes in his New Scientist magazine article dated 29 October 1987 titled A sure bet for understanding computers with reference to the London Science Museum The Julius totalisator with its automatic odds machine is the earliest on-line, real-time, data processing and computation system that the curators at the Science Museum have identified so far. |
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First released 25 March 1997 In this transient cyberspace, this web site has been at this same address for over 10 years Last updates January 2004 - New chapter, Caracas a latterday Julius tote installation January 2004 - Addtition of Julius Avenue to the Sir George Julius chapter January 2004 - Addtition of The mistique of these machines to the Video Clips of a working Julius tote chapter January 2004 - Addtition of Technology to shake to to the Video Clips of a working Julius tote chapter September 2007 - Additions resulting from newly found information and photographs taken during a holiday in New Zealand. Chapters modified are George Julius Genealogy and 3 more systems in Asia/Links to other pages October 2007 - Addition of Eagle Farm Racecourse Museum chapter December 2007 - Addition of An example of a PDP11 machine code diagnostic program A link exists to this titled machine code program in the Memories of a system long gone chapter under the heading To the Technologists in the sixth paragraph. December 2007 - Addition of Kota Kinabalu a computer tote installation chapter January 2008 - Addition to the Computer Tote Maintenance chapter of extracts from the Brisbane Fault logs of the PDP11 era January 2008 - Addition of Phil MacGyver Slocombe article in the 3 more ATL systems in Asia / Links to other pages chapter June 2008 - Improvements to Computer Tote Maintenance chapter June 2008 - Addition to synchronicity in Ex ATL meets Ex JP&G/Synchronicity/Photo Gallery chapter July 2008 - 2 additional anecdotes "emergency stop sell" and "Priest RDC operator" and an additional final paragraph to Memories of a system long gone chapter July 2008 - Addition of "An Anecdote from Jim Loveday" to the Sir George Julius chapter |
| Copyright © 1997 - 2008 |
| See the Accolades |
| An appeal for more information |
| A note about this web site - A part of the precept for this site was that it cost nothing. No web creation or html editing tools were used except for a short trial of early freeware html editing tools to see what was being missed. The html has been manually written using a text editor or simple word processor. I have made no attempt to change the look of this site to make it conform with the 21st century. I think it is appropriate that it represents the past as it is afterall a history site. |
| Introduction |
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I find it curious that, for a nation that stops for a horse race, The Melbourne Cup, we Australians know so little of the rich history of the automatic totalisator which is all our own. Sir George Julius, the founder of the Australian companies Julius Poole & Gibson Pty Ltd and Automatic Totalisators Ltd, invented the world's first automatic totalisator , which was installed at Ellerslie Racecourse in New Zealand in 1913. Automatic Totalisators grew to be a monopoly exporting totalisator systems throughout the world and was sold to AWA in 1991. After the monopoly years it became part of an oligopoly. Finally with the advent of the digital computer, totalisators became just another application of computing and the business became openly competitive. I worked on the company's first sell pay computer totalizator system that was installed in Brisbane. This system superseded electromechanical totalizators which were descendants of the original invention. I was impressed by the craftsmanship and the ingenuity of these old systems, parts of which dated back to circa 1926. I saw one of these totalizator systems bulldozed and realised that this history could easily be lost. Along with peers I started to save shaft adders from the oldest totalizator at Ipswich. The shaft adders are analogous to part of the central processing unit in modern day terminology. I found considerable interest in these shaft adders by Museums and Educational Institutions resulting in many donations. One of the professors accepting a donation remarked that he had seen a model of Babbage's analytical engine and that the shaft adder reminded him of it. This consolidated my impression that these electro mechanical systems represented a technology that inspired the birth of the electronic computer. Not in design but in concept. This page is a continued attempt to keep this history from fading away! I am unable to offer more eloquent words to express the motivation behind attempting to retain some of this history than those of Frank Matthews in the Preface to the book From Tote to Cad published by Julius Pool and Gibson: "This book was written because memories grow dim and records tend to disappear. As Julius Poole & Gibson is the longest established Australian consulting engineering practice there seemed to be a duty to produce a historical record before it was too late."
I have included information on the Brisbane Project as one of the Company's later achievements. By 1978 the Company was struggling with applying its monopoly oriented culture to the new world of competition. The Brisbane Project existed in the shadow of a much larger project, Sha Tin in Hong Kong. When this failed, due to inability to deliver on time, the company's future depended on the Brisbane Project's success. Our brief became simple, "Brisbane must work". I consider myself privileged to have worked with the small group of selfless devotees who moulded another potential failure into success.
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Inside one of the Brisbane tote mobiles
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Having mentioned the failure of the Sha Tin project, I will add that at the time of the failure, an Automatic Totalisators'
computer tote system had been working at the Royal Hong Kong Jockey Club's Happy Valley track for a decade. This system was
PDP8 based and supported 550 individual selling points.
I recall my first experience with the "Nation stopping for a horse race" mentioned above. I came to Sydney in 1964 from Hong Kong to attend boarding school. School life was structured and disciplined and education was a serious matter. It was with some suspicion of being the object of a practical joke, that I listened to the other students telling me that in the afternoon the teacher would stop and we would be allowed to listen to the radio broadcast of the Melbourne cup. I was introduced to the concept of a sweep, which further contributed to my suspicions that this was a joke. I was later informed that I had been allotted Polo Prince and that this had been the last horse drawn from the hat and that it had next to no chance of winning. At this point I felt disadvantaged by not being fully initiated in these Australian customs. I was astonished when I found that what I had been told was correct. I started to listen to my first horse race and the next thing I knew "They were off". A person was talking in a quick constant manner. As the race continued, the pace increased along with the excitement level. The words "Polo Prince" appeared more and more and I thought that this is probably good. The excitement built to a crescendo, then the broadcast returned to normal. It was later confirmed, Polo Prince had won. The first year that an Automatic Totalisators system operated at Flemington on the Melbourne Cup was 1931. Totalisator betting was illegal in Victoria prior to 1931. Brian Conlon
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| Acknowledgements |
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| Information has been extracted from Automatic Totalisators company magazines and documents. |
| Thanks to Max Anderson, Frank Matthews and Max Sherrard, for allowing me to quote from the book From Tote to Cad published by Julius Poole & Gibson. |
| Thanks to Peter Collier for bringing the New Scientist article mentioned above to my attention. |
| Thanks to Crames Studios--3D Animations and Graphics for the Australian flag |
| Thanks to my 11 year old son (1997) who was a great help with the typing, the html and the images. |
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Introduction