Tote board

{{short description|Large numeric or alphanumeric display used to convey information}} {{More citations needed|date=May 2025}} thumb|Tote Board at Hollywood Park, California A '''tote board''' (or '''totalisator'''/'''totalizator''') is a numeric or alphanumeric display used to convey information, typically at a race track (to display the odds or payoffs for each horse) or at a telethon (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, calculating payoff odds, displaying them, and producing tickets based on incoming bets.{{Citation needed|date=May 2025}}

==History== 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.{{Citation needed|date=May 2025}}

The first all-mechanical totalisator was invented by George Julius. Julius was a consulting engineer, based in Sydney.<ref>The Julius Tote & its Outstanding Engineer ''EHA Magazine'' December 2013 pages 21/22</ref> His father, Churchill Julius, 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.{{Citation needed|date=May 2025}}

Initially, Julius was attempting to develop a voting calculating machine for the Government of Australia 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.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://australianbettingsites.net.au/history-of-sports-betting-in-australia/|title=The History of Australian Sports Betting|access-date=24 July 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180310020141/https://australianbettingsites.net.au/history-of-sports-betting-in-australia/|archive-date=2018-03-10|url-status=dead}}</ref>

The first all-mechanical machine was installed at Ellerslie Racecourse 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 in Western Australia in 1917. Julius founded Automatic Totalisators Limited (ATL) in 1917, which supplied the "Premier Totalisator: now including electrical components".<ref name="AE">Chisholm, Alec H. (ed.), The Australian Encyclopaedia, Vol. 4, p. 538, "Horse Racing", Halstead Press, Sydney, 1963</ref> The first totalisators installed in the United States were at Hialeah Park, Florida, in 1932 (by ATL), and at Arlington Park racecourse, Chicago, in 1933 by American Totalisator. The first entirely electronic totalisator was developed in 1966.{{Citation needed|date=May 2025}}

Totalisators have been superseded by general purpose computers running specialised wagering software such as Autotote. In many cases beyond older systems, telethon tote boards have either been replaced by LCD displays showing totals, or scoreboards adapted to display dollar amounts.{{Citation needed|date=March 2024}}

==Automatic totalisators== thumb|Behind the betting windows at Ascot racetrack, Australia February 1939 An automatic totalisator is a device to add up the bets in a pari-mutuel betting system. The whole of the pot (the stakes on all competitors) is divided ''pro rata'' to the stakes placed on the winning competitor, and those tickets are paid out. Essentially, it implements a system of starting price (SP) betting.{{Citation needed|date=May 2025}}

In particular, it refers to the invention of George Julius, the English-born, New Zealand educated, Australian inventor, engineer and businessman, though there have been other claimants, notably engineer Joseph G. Nash.<ref>{{cite news |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article129112675 |title=Invention of Totalisator |newspaper=The News |location=Adelaide |date=30 April 1929 |access-date=22 September 2015 |page=8 Edition: Home |via=National Library of Australia}}</ref>

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.{{Citation needed|date=May 2025}}

The method was widely used in the Australian, New Zealand and American horse-racing industries and for greyhound racing in the UK, although there were other installations in countries as diverse as France, Venezuela and Singapore.{{Citation needed|date=May 2025}}

==References== {{Reflist}}

==External links== {{Wiktionary|tote board|totalisator|totalizator}} * [http://members.ozemail.com.au/~bconlon/ ''Totalisator History'' by B Conlon] * [http://members.ozemail.com.au/~bconlon/american.htm#top ''Hialeah Park, Florida'' installation by ATM] * Bob Doran, [http://www.rutherfordjournal.org/article020109.html ''The First Automatic Totalisator''], The Rutherford Journal. * [http://www.rutherfordjournal.org/article020105.html ''Automatic Totalisators Ltd'' in Australia] * [https://ir.canterbury.ac.nz/bitstream/handle/10092/1026/thesis_fulltext.pdf?sequence=1 ''Who killed the Bookies''] New Zealand University of Canterbury thesis by R A Graham{{Dead link|date=July 2018 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=no }}

Category:Analog computers Category:Sports betting