Sir George Julius took a gamble on converting his voting machine to a racing totalisator

A century ago this week punters at Randwick enjoyed a leap into the future.

The Saddling Paddock Tote Building, known as the Octagonal Bar, which housed Sir George Julius’s Totalisator, opens at Randwick Racecourse in 1917. The Totalisator was the fourth in the world to be installed.

When punters turned up to Randwick to enjoy the spring racing carnival a century ago this week, they entered the modern era. Until then they had placed bets based on odds figured out by people. But in 1917 the racecourse unveiled its new automatic totalisator — a machine which did the calculations.

Housed in its own purpose-built edifice, the totalisator was made up of row upon row of brass gears, cogs, rods, wires and pulleys. Essentially it was a basic form of computer, but its sole function was working out a horse’s chance of winning a race based on who had bets on horses in the race.

It was a marvel of modern technology in its time. Although it was not the first in the world, the Randwick totalisator was the first in NSW. It was a state-of-the-art calculating machine and was designed by an English-born, New Zealand-educated, but Sydney-based engineering genius named George Julius.

Julius had originally invented the technology for another more civic-minded purpose, but converted it to be used at a racecourse, knowing he would easily find a buyer.

Sir George Julius, circa 1930s. Picture: National Library of Australia

George Alfred Julius, born in Norwich in England on April 29, 1873, was the son of a clergyman who brought his family to Australia when he was appointed archdeacon of Ballarat.

Julius was educated at the Melbourne Church of England Grammar School in Victoria, but when his father moved the family to New Zealand in 1890, Julius he studied for a degree in mechanical engineering at the University of New Zealand, Canterbury College.

His father had been a tinkerer and Julius learnt much by spending time with him in his father’s workshop. He found work with the Western Australian Railways in 1896 but moved to Sydney to work with a timber company in 1907, with the promise he would be allowed to operate his own private engineering practice.

While he was in WA Julius had seen instances of electoral fraud and worked for some years on a “cheat-proof” vote tabulator to minimise or eliminate the human element by having a machine count votes. Unfortunately, the government wasn’t interested in his revolutionary voting device, so he looked for others who might find it useful.

The inner workings of the Totalisator machine as devised by George Julius.

While Julius sold one of the voting machines to buyers in New York, a friend also convinced him that it might be useful in helping to accurately totalise bets in the racing industry. It must have presented him with a moral dilemma. He did not gamble and his father had been a campaigner against the evils of gambling. But by removing the human factor (preventing people corruptly fixing the odds), it be could argued that his machine would clean up racetrack gambling.

He designed a working model (now part of the collection of the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences in Sydney) and began making his calculating systems for racetracks. The first was installed in Ellerslie Racecourse in Auckland in 1913. It was the world’s first automatic totalisator and although it was cutting edge, it would be the last of Julius’s all-mechanical devices, later versions would also use electrical elements.

A model of the automatic totalisator designed by Sir George Julius. Picture: Courtesy Museum of Applied Arts & Sciences

In 1917 another totalisator opened at a track in WA and another in Queensland. That year he formed his own company Automatic Totalisators Ltd (ATL), and installed his first NSW machine, which began operating at Randwick, on September 29. Newspapers at the time report huge crowds turning out to give the machines a try, but they also report that on its first day of operation only one of the three machines was operating. Clearly there were still kinks to sort out with the technology. There was also some resistance to the totalisators in NSW, in particular from the Tattersall’s Club, but that fell by the wayside in the face of public demand.

Generally the machine was considered a success, because it could handle vastly more traffic than people working out odds by hand. Subsequently, Julius’s totalisators were installed at other tracks around Australia and all over the world.

In 1919 Julius founded the Institution of Engineers and, in 1926, was appointed the first head of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (later the CSIRO). In 1929 he was knighted.

His company ATL survived the Great Depression as orders for his devices continued to come in from overseas (the US installed their first in 1932 in Florida.) He died in 1946.

Julius’s machines continued to operate on racetracks across Australia until they were supplanted by computers in 1970.

Originally published as Sir George Julius took a gamble on converting his voting machine to a racing totalisator