George Julius' Mechanical Totalisator

August 26, 2009 7:41 PM

Sir George Julius's Automatic Totalisator, first used by the public in New Zealand, and quickly taken up by racetracks throughout Australasia and North America (warning hideous HTML), automates parimutuel betting.
posted by Fiasco da Gama (4 comments total)

I haven't read through all the links yet, but it looks like that ozemail.com homepage was created on the Totalisator ...and likely uploaded via carrier pigeon.
posted by mosk at 8:43 PM on August 26, 2009

What a find, this is delightful. Thanks for posting.
posted by jet_silver at 10:22 PM on August 26, 2009

Is it wrong to find it amusing that he couldn't find enough buyers for his vote tabulator so he went to gamblers instead?
posted by madajb at 11:45 PM on August 26, 2009

Interesting stuff.

madajb, Edison's first patent was for an electric voting machine. It was a failure and he later said it taught him never to invent something without first making sure there was a market for it.
posted by otio at 8:28 AM on August 27, 2009