Cover Image: Sir George Julius, founder of Automatic Totalisators Limited (ATL), in colour. A pioneering engineer whose mechanical totalisator systems revolutionised betting at racetracks worldwide.
A selection of Brian Conlon's ATL Totalisator website photos in Colour.
Updated: 20-Dec-2025, 5:35 AM by Don McKenzie
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Sir George Julius, founder of Automatic Totalisators Limited (ATL) and Chairman of CSIR(O) - Original B&W Photo.
Sir George Julius, Australia's Father of Scientific & Industrial Research.
I have read in a Trove archive article from The Sydney Morning Herald dated Friday 4 November 1927, that Automatic Totalisators Ltd took over the obligations of Totalling Mechanisms Ltd in April 1917 and that Totalling Mechanisms Ltd was dissolved in 1919. Judging from the painted name on the side of this building, the name Automatic Totalisators is painted over some other name, probably the previous tenants, possibly Totalling Mechanisms Ltd.
Totalling Mechanisms Ltd was a company formed in 1911 which was the forerunner of Automatic Totalisators Limited formed in 1917. It seems to me that the appearance of the word Totalling in the telegraphic address is a flash back reference to this company. It is possible that the word Totalisator had not yet entered the English language from the French Totalisateur at the time Totalling Mechanisms Ltd was named.
This factory operated from at least the establishment of Automatic Totalisators Limited in 1917 till 1933/34. There is a possibility that it pre-dated Automatic Totalisators Limited and was in use by its predecessor company Totalling Mechanisms Limited, starting with the manufacture of the world's first automatic totalisator, which was installed in Ellerslie New Zealand in 1913.
An early workshop photograph inside the Alice Street Newtown factory where the TIMs J5s or possibly J6s (Ticket Issuing Machines) are being assembled.
I think the Alice St factory was from 1919 to 1933. The forerunner to Automatic Totalisators was Totalling Mechanisms.
The phone book entries for Automatic Totalisators Limited start in 1917, the year the company was founded, with an address of 4 Bridge Street, with the same entry for 1918. The company Totalling Mechanisms Limited was in existence in 1914 and seems to be the forerunner of Automatic Totalisators Limited.
I think the Alice St factory was from 1919 to 1933. The forerunner to Automatic Totalisators was Totalling Mechanisms.
The ATL factory in 1938, where hundreds of precision mechanical components were manufactured for totalisator systems worldwide.
I was born in 1943, yet strangely, a photograph taken five years before my birth stirred a surprising number of questions in my mind.
In the photograph, many of the staff are wearing grey dust coats.
When I joined the P.M.G. as a technician-in-training in 1959, we were issued with grey dust coats. And when I arrived at ATL in 1976, most of the field engineering staff were also wearing them. You were expected to be a motor, electrical, and printer mechanic — the environment was dirty and greasy, after all. In those days, the ticket-issuing machine (the TIM) was also a printing press!
You'll notice two shades of grey in the coats. The darker one resembles the P.M.G. colour I remember from my early years. When I joined ATL, I even managed to resurrect my old P.M.G. dust coats — perhaps a tradition handed down from the early Julius Tote operations rather than anything directly linked to my P.M.G. days.
To the right-hand side of the photo, there's an old car that caught my attention. I pride myself on vintage car identification, but this one had me stumped — and I spent far too long trying to solve it.
As a young man, I owned and worked on Fords from the T Model through to the B Model, covering most years up to 1934. I also owned both 1924 and 1938 Chevrolets. So I was confident the car in the photo wasn't one of those. Perhaps an Essex or a Plymouth — maybe something similar. I doubt it was a small English car. Still, that distinctive taillight and spare wheel mounting remain a mystery.
The Council of the Institution of Engineers Australia
Inspection of the totalisator system at Flemington Racecourse, Melbourne - one of the earliest and most famous installations.
This photograph, apart from showing Sir George in the foreground of the group of people, is a good view of the odds calculating mechanisms showing the horizontal and vertical sliders for each runner, their tubular transport mechanisms, the horizontal slider driving chains connecting to their respective shaft adders and the vertical slider driving chains connecting to the pool net total shaft running into the photograph across the top of the framework.
By 1955, ATL had progressed to using paper tape input systems as part of the evolution toward electronic totalisators.
I have discussed this with Brian Conlon, and it is mentioned on his website. The punched tape used in 1955 was white on both sides. In later years, when Peter Collier, Harry Lane, and I operated this system, the tape was black on the top.
Inside the 1917 Royal Randwick Paddock Tote House - Sydney
New "Win and Place" Premier Totalisator installed, 1929, in Perth, Western Australia for the West Australian Trotting Association. This machine replaces an earlier "Premier" Installation installed in 1916.
The Western Australia tote house with ATL equipment installed, demonstrating the scale of these early computing systems.
This image shows the Western Australian Trotting Association's Tote Building housing the second Julius Totalisator at Gloucester Park. It is now over a century since the first Julius tote was installed at Gloucester Park and commenced operation. I have included this photograph as it is the most spectacular nighttime photograph of a tote house I have seen. I know of two Julius tote installations here.
