A tote board (or totalisator/totalizator) is a numeric or alphanumeric display used to convey information, typically at a
race track
A race track (racetrack, racing track or racing circuit) is a facility built for racing of vehicles, athletes, or animals (e.g. horse racing or greyhound racing). A race track also may feature grandstands or concourses. Race tracks are also u ...
(to display the odds or payoffs for each horse) or at a
telethon
A telethon (a portmanteau of "television" and "marathon") is a televised fundraising event that lasts many hours or even days, the purpose of which is to raise money for a charitable, political or other purportedly worthy cause.
Most telethons f ...
(to display the total amount donated to the charitable organization sponsoring the event).
The term "tote board" comes from the colloquialism for "totalizator" (or "totalisator"), the name for the automated system which runs
parimutuel betting
Parimutuel betting or pool betting is a betting system in which all bets of a particular type are placed together in a pool; taxes and the "house-take" or "vigorish" are deducted, and payoff odds are calculated by sharing the pool among all winnin ...
, calculating payoff odds, displaying them, and producing tickets based on incoming bets. Parimutuel systems had used totalisator boards since the 1860s and they were often housed in substantial buildings. However the manual systems often resulted in substantial delays in calculations of clients' payouts.
The first all-mechanical totalisator was invented by
George Julius
Sir George Alfred Julius (29 April 187328 June 1946) was an English-born Australian inventor and entrepreneur. He was the founder of Julius Poole & Gibson Pty Ltd and Automatic Totalisators Ltd, and invented the world's first automatic totalisa ...
. Julius was a consulting engineer, based in Sydney. His father,
Churchill Julius
Churchill Julius (15 October 1847 – 1 September 1938) was an Anglican cleric in England, then in Australia and New Zealand, becoming the first Archbishop of New Zealand.
Biography
Julius was born at Richmond, Surrey in 1847. He was educated ...
, an Anglican Bishop, had campaigned, in the early years of the twentieth century, against the iniquities of gambling using totalisators and its damage to New Zealand society. That attitude had changed by late 1907 when he argued that the totalisator removed much of the evil of gambling with bookmakers. Bishop Churchill was himself an amateur mechanic with a reputation for fixing clocks and organs in parishes he visited.
Initially, George Julius was attempting to develop a voting calculating machine for the Australian government, to automatically reduce the instances of voter fraud and create a cheat-free political environment. He went on to present his unique invention, only to have his design rejected as it was deemed to be excessive.
The first all-mechanical machine was installed at
Ellerslie Racecourse
Ellerslie Racecourse is the main racecourse in Auckland, New Zealand, for thoroughbred racehorses. It is an undulating, grass circuit in the suburb of Ellerslie, with a circumference of just under 1,900 metres. Racing is conducted in a clockwi ...
in New Zealand in 1913 (first used on the Holy Saturday races on 22 March 1913), and the second was installed at
Gloucester Park Racetrack
Gloucester Park is a harness racing course in Perth, Western Australia. In the suburb of East Perth, the oval course is adjacent to the WACA Ground. The track is lit, and Friday night pacing events are popular. As of 2006 the Western Australia ...
in
Western Australia
Western Australia (commonly abbreviated as WA) is a state of Australia occupying the western percent of the land area of Australia excluding external territories. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to th ...
in 1917.
George Julius
Sir George Alfred Julius (29 April 187328 June 1946) was an English-born Australian inventor and entrepreneur. He was the founder of Julius Poole & Gibson Pty Ltd and Automatic Totalisators Ltd, and invented the world's first automatic totalisa ...
founded Automatic Totalisators Limited (ATL) in 1917, which supplied the "Premier Totalisator: now including electrical components".
[Chisholm, Alec H. (ed.), The Australian Encyclopaedia, Vol. 4, p. 538, "Horse Racing", Halstead Press, Sydney, 1963] The first totalisators installed in the United States were at
Hialeah Park
The Hialeah Park Race Track (also known as the Hialeah Race Track or Hialeah Park) is a historic racetrack in Hialeah, Florida, Hialeah, Florida. Its site covers 40 square blocks of central-east side Hialeah from Palm Avenue east to East 4th Avenu ...
,
Florida
Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and to ...
, in 1932 (by ATL), and at
Arlington Park
Arlington International Racecourse (formerly Arlington Park, the name was Arlington Park Jockey Club from as soon as 1948 up to 1955) was a horse race track in the Chicago suburb of Arlington Heights, Illinois. Horse racing in the Chicago regi ...
racecourse,
Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
, image_map =
, map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago
, coordinates =
, coordinates_footnotes =
, subdivision_type = Country
, subdivision_name ...
, in 1933 by
American Totalisator
The American Totalisator Company, known today as AmTote International (often referred to as AmTote), specializes in totalisator equipment used to control parimutuel betting at horse racing, greyhound racing, and jai-alai facilities.
The company w ...
. The first entirely electronic totalisator was developed in 1966.
Totalisators have been superseded by general purpose
computer
A computer is a machine that can be programmed to Execution (computing), carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations (computation) automatically. Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic sets of operations known as C ...
s running specialised
wagering
Gambling (also known as betting or gaming) is the wagering of something of Value (economics), value ("the stakes") on a Event (probability theory), random event with the intent of winning something else of value, where instances of strategy (ga ...
software
Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work.
At the lowest programming level, executable code consists ...
such as
Autotote
Light & Wonder, Inc., formerly Scientific Games Corporation (SG), is an American corporation that provides gambling products and services. The company is headquartered in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Light & Wonder's gaming division provides products such ...
. In many cases beyond older systems, telethon tote boards have either been replaced by
LCD
A liquid-crystal display (LCD) is a flat-panel display or other electronically modulated optical device that uses the light-modulating properties of liquid crystals combined with polarizers. Liquid crystals do not emit light directly but in ...
displays showing totals, or
scoreboard
A scoreboard is a large board for publicly displaying the score in a game. Most levels of sport from high school and above use at least one scoreboard for keeping score, measuring time, and displaying statistics. Scoreboards in the past used ...
s adapted to display dollar amounts.
Automatic totalisators
An automatic totalisator is a device to add up the bets in a
pari-mutuel
Parimutuel betting or pool betting is a betting system in which all bets of a particular type are placed together in a pool; taxes and the "house-take" or "vigorish" are deducted, and payoff odds are calculated by sharing the pool among all winnin ...
betting system. The whole of the pot (the stakes on all competitors) is divided ''
pro rata
''Pro rata'' is an adverb or adjective meaning in equal portions or in proportion. The term is used in many legal and economic contexts. The hyphenated spelling ''pro-rata'' for the adjective form is common, as recommended for adjectives by some E ...
'' to the stakes placed on the winning competitor and those tickets are paid out. Essentially it implements a system of
starting price
In horse racing, the starting price (SP) is the odds prevailing on a particular horse in the on-course fixed-odds betting market at the time a race begins. The method by which SPs are set for each runner varies in different countries but is genera ...
(SP) betting.
In particular it refers to the invention of
George Julius
Sir George Alfred Julius (29 April 187328 June 1946) was an English-born Australian inventor and entrepreneur. He was the founder of Julius Poole & Gibson Pty Ltd and Automatic Totalisators Ltd, and invented the world's first automatic totalisa ...
, the English-born, New Zealand educated, Australian inventor, engineer and businessman, though there have been other claimants, notably engineer Joseph G. Nash.
The term automatic refers to the fact that the bets were automatically summed and a ticket issued when a bet was registered on the issuing machines, and it provided a safe and virtually fraud-free method of betting, replacing the earlier
jam-pot totes, which used either paper transactions or some method of counting bets like steel ball bearings. The machine did not actually calculate the payout.
The method was widely used in the Australian, New Zealand and American
horse-racing
Horse racing is an equestrian performance sport, typically involving two or more horses ridden by jockeys (or sometimes driven without riders) over a set distance for competition. It is one of the most ancient of all sports, as its basic pr ...
industries and for
greyhound racing
Greyhound racing is an organized, competitive sport in which greyhounds are raced around a track. There are two forms of greyhound racing, track racing (normally around an oval track) and coursing; the latter is now banned in most countries. Tra ...
in the UK, although there were other installations in countries as diverse as France, Venezuela and Singapore.
See also
*
American Totalisator
The American Totalisator Company, known today as AmTote International (often referred to as AmTote), specializes in totalisator equipment used to control parimutuel betting at horse racing, greyhound racing, and jai-alai facilities.
The company w ...
*
Harringay Stadium
Harringay Stadium was a major greyhound racing and motorcycle speedway venue in Harringay, north London. It was built and opened in 1927 and closed in 1987.
Construction
Harringay Stadium was the third greyhound racing stadium to open in Br ...
*
Tabulating machine
The tabulating machine was an electromechanical machine designed to assist in summarizing information stored on punched cards. Invented by Herman Hollerith, the machine was developed to help process data for the 1890 U.S. Census. Later models w ...
References
External links
''Totalisator History'' by B Conlon
*
Bob Doran
Robert William Doran HFNZCS (5 November 1944 – 13 October 2018) was a New Zealand-based computer scientist and historian of computing. He was Professor Emeritus of Computer Science at the University of Auckland, New Zealand.
Robert W. Dor ...
''The First Automatic Totalisator'' The Rutherford Journal.
''Who killed the Bookies''New Zealand
University of Canterbury
The University of Canterbury ( mi, Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha; postnominal abbreviation ''Cantuar.'' or ''Cant.'' for ''Cantuariensis'', the Latin name for Canterbury) is a public research university based in Christchurch, New Zealand. It was ...
thesis by R A Graham{{Dead link, date=July 2018 , bot=InternetArchiveBot , fix-attempted=no
Analog computers
Sports betting