Connections in the History of Australian Computing - History of Computing: Learning from the Past - page 2

“A friend in the west conceived the idea of getting me to make a machine to regis-
ter votes, and so to expedite elections by giving the result without any human
intervention.” [1]
George liked the challenge and by 1906 he had a “Voting machine” 2 which he offered
to the Australian Federal Government. They could see difficulties, and considerable
expense, and declined. But George's advisers would not be thwarted:
“A friend who knew of a 'jam tin tote' - a machine which kept a sort of record of
tickets sold at each window ... I found the problem of great interest as the perfect
tote must have a mechanism capable of adding the records from a number of
operators all of whom might issue a ticket on the same horse at the same instant.”
[2]
George was head-hunted from the railways by a Sydney engineering firm, and also set
himself up as a consulting engineer in 1907. Even with two jobs and a young family
he built a prototype of his Automatic Totalisator in his home workshop [3]. 3
The first Tote was installed in Auckland NZ in 1913. Though racing officials pre-
dicted that the “giant tangle of piano wires, pulleys and cast iron boxes” wouldn't
work, it was a great success. George patented it in 1914, 4 installed the second in
Western Australia in 1916, set up Automatic Totalisators Ltd. in 1917 and never
looked back. By 1970 Australian Totalisators were in service in 29 countries [4].
The London Science Museum has described the Julius Tote as the “earliest online,
real-time, data-processing and computation system” that the curators can identify [5].
George took part in an increasing number of engineering and scientific bodies, and
when the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (later CSIRO) was formed in
1926 he became its first Chairman [6]. The Council was formed to direct research into
agriculture but by the mid 1930s Sir George became convinced that research should
be extended to industry, and he was instrumental in creating the Aeronautical Re-
search Laboratories, Electrotechnology Section, and the Radiophysics Laboratory in
1939.
3 David Myers' CSIR Differential Analyser
About 1925 George Julius gave a lecture on calculating machines where he demon-
strated his Totalisator model [7]. In the audience 14 year old David Myers 5 was very
impressed, and the session generated a lifelong interest in computing machinery.
David graduated from Sydney University then headed for the UK in 1933. Before
starting his PhD at Oxford he briefly worked for a company constructing a mechani-
cal “computer” (a Bush Differential Analyser) for Prof Douglas Hartree at Manches-
ter. David used this D-A later, and maintained contact with Prof Hartree for many
years.
David returned to Sydney in 1936, joined the CSIR National Standards Laboratory ,
and subsequently headed its new Electrotechnology Section. Instead of standards, this
2 UK patent 1906/28,335.
3 This model is now in the Sydney Powerhouse Museum collection.
4 Australian Patent 15133/14, 21 December 1914.
5 Born Sydney 5 June 1911, died Sydney 11 November 1999 [8].