On Track Magazine Spring 2021

26 TOTE BAR & DINING A TASTE OF HISTORY This remarkable story is embedded deep in the foundations of the building that has been lovingly transformed into TOTE Bar & Dining. A story about a brilliant Australian inventor called George Julius and his stupendous contraption. A contraption that revolutionised racing worldwide and is now recognised as one of the world’s first computers. When an aspiring engineer and Archbishop’s son invented a vote-counting machine so accurate it scared the politicians, he thought he was on a winner. He was, but not in the way anyone expected. A chance visit to the races convinced young George Julius he could put his gigantic metal calculator to other uses, eliminate betting fraud and cater to the huge popularity of the sport. And by George, the scale of his endeavour was extraordinary. The machine itself was the size of several houses and composed of a finely tuned steel orchestra of gears, chains, levers, and weights. In the digital age, it may look preposterous, but the ‘Julius Apparatus’ or totalisator machine was an instant hit. Over the next fifty years, it would become a staple of racecourses around the world – from Longchamp to Royal Ascot. In Victoria, the first machine was installed at Moonee Valley in the midst of the Great Depression, where it became known simply as the TOTE. And George? Well, he became head of the CSIRO and was awarded a knighthood. With its automatic odds machine, the Julius Apparatus is the earliest online, real-time, data processing and computation system that the curators at the London Science Museum have identified. New Scientist Magazine The Sporting Globe. Saturday 15 August 1931. MVRC Editorial