Tote board

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Tote Board at Hollywood Park, California


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.

The first totalisator was invented by William Brownie Garden.[citation needed] The machine was installed at Ellerslie Racecourse in New Zealand in 1925, and the second was installed at Gloucester Park Racetrack in Western Australia in 1930. George Julius founded Automatic Totalisators Limited (ATL) in 1917, which supplied the "Premier Totalisator: now including electrical components".[1] 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. The first entirely electronic totalisator was developed in 1966.

Totalisators have been superseded by general purpose computers running specialised wagering software such as Autotote. In many cases beyond older systems, telethon tote boards have either been replaced by LCD displays showing totals, or scoreboards adapted to display dollar amounts.

Automatic totalisators[edit]

Inside the totalisator 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.

In particular it refers to the invention of George Julius, the English-born, New Zealand educated, Australian inventor, engineer and businessman, a leader of Australian engineering in the first half of the twentieth century.

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.

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.

See also[edit]


  1. ^ Chisholm, Alec H. (ed.), The Australian Encyclopaedia, Vol. 4, p. 538, “Horse Racing”, Halstead Press, Sydney, 1963

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