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The evolution of Australian computer technology is exemplified by the transition from ATL’s electromechanical, (non-programmable Computer-Calculator) Totalisator Networks to the CSIR Mk 1 — Australia’s first digital computer, the fifth stored-program computer in the world, and the oldest surviving first-generation electronic computer. ATL’s systems were groundbreaking in their time: the Longchamps installation in France during the 1930s used around 273 terminals, while Sydney’s Randwick system eventually operated 1,200 ticket machines at its peak.

CSIRAC marked Australia’s entry into the digital computing era. As the country’s first digital computer and the world’s fifth stored-program machine, it pioneered practical computing in the early 1950s and introduced some of the first programming techniques. CSIRAC supported scientific and engineering calculations, played the first known music on a digital computer, and survives today as the oldest first-generation electronic computer.

When Sir George Alfred Julius unveiled his automatic totalisator in 1913, few could have imagined that a tangle of shafts, relays, and counters humming at Randwick Racecourse would foreshadow the birth of electronic computing in Australia. Yet in those rhythmic clicks of gears and clutches lay the seed of an idea that would re-emerge decades later inside the glowing vacuum tubes of the nation's first digital computer - CSIRAC.

Julius was a mechanical visionary. Long before anyone spoke of "digital logic," he was building it. His totalisators calculated bets and odds in real time using electromechanical circuits that could add, compare, and control outcomes faster than any team of clerks. It was the first large-scale information-processing machine Australia had ever seen - and one of the earliest anywhere in the world.

But Julius's influence ran deeper than machinery. In 1926, he became the founding chairman of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), a new body created to harness science for the nation's progress. He insisted that engineers and scientists should work together - an unusual thought at the time - and his council fostered the sort of cross-disciplinary experimentation that would later prove vital to computing research.

The initial meetings that eventually led to the creation of CSIRAC were held in a back office of George's engineering firm, Julius Poole and Gibson, in Sydney. BTW: Julius Poole & Gibson is the longest established Australian consulting engineering practice.

Sir George Julius inspecting the new installation at Flemington Racecourse Melbourne in 1931. From 1976 to 1999, I spent many hours in this machine room, so many, in fact, that I found myself ringing in the new year there on multiple occasions. Image Source: Brian Conlon.

From the Totalisator to CSIRAC

Fast-forward twenty years. In a modest laboratory at the CSIR Radiophysics Division, two men - Trevor Pearcey and Maston Beard - began assembling what would become the CSIR Mk1, later known as CSIRAC. Instead of relays and rotors, their machine relied on hundreds of glowing thermionic valves. Instead of mechanical odds and payouts, it solved equations and played music. But the principle was the same: information turned into motion, logic translated into hardware.

"Both men believed that machines could serve thought itself - that computation, whether by gear or grid, could push the boundaries of what Australia could achieve."

Pearcey never met Julius; Julius died just as the Mk1 project was beginning. Yet it's hard not to feel a thread connecting them - a line stretching from the spinning escapements of the totalisator to the oscillating pulses of CSIRAC. Both men believed that machines could serve thought itself; that computation, whether by gear or grid, could push the boundaries of what Australia could achieve.

So no, Julius did not directly inspire CSIRAC's design. But his spirit - the conviction that engineering and imagination belong together - ran through the CSIR he helped found, and through the machine that would later bring that dream to life.

I've always noticed that the metal panels of CSIRAC seem to match the colour and style of the ATL panels from the 1940s, and I wondered if the fabrication might have been outsourced to ATL due to their expertise in this area. Although I couldn't find a direct connection to ATL, it's possible that the team drew inspiration from the era's design aesthetic or leveraged local expertise in electronics and metalwork.

The CSIRAC computer's metal panels were likely fabricated at the CSIRO Division of Radiophysics in Sydney, Australia, where the computer was designed and built between 1947 and 1949. The team, led by Trevor Pearcey and Maston Beard, constructed CSIRAC, which consisted of multiple metal cabinets containing power units, CPU (6SN7, 6V6, KT66, and EA50 diodes - thermionic valves), memory, and processing circuitry. The exact fabrication location of the metal panels is not specified, but it's reasonable to assume that the CSIRO's Radiophysics Laboratory in Sydney, where the CSIRAC was built, would have had the necessary facilities for fabrication.

David Milton Myers

I've checked several public archives and databases, but was unable to locate clear documentary evidence that David Milton Myers was officially part of the development team for CSIRAC. Myers is noted as an Australian electrical engineer with work at Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) and in instrumentation/analogue computing. There's a reference (in the Muse magazine, University of Sydney) that as a teenager Myers was inspired by seeing Sir George Alfred Julius demonstrate a totalisator.

I'm done!

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From gears to valves, from odds to algorithms, the lineage is clear: without Julius's vision, CSIRAC might never have found its spark.