ROBOT BOOKMAKER

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 666, 18 May 1929, Page 13

ROBOT BOOKMAKER

ELECTRIC TOTE NOVELTY NEW ENGLISH INVENTION If the bookmaker of today could visualise what the scientist and mathematician is making of the bookmaker of the future, he would need all the philosophy of the turf to console him. A young man from Oxford. Mr. R. M. Hamilton, who knows the intricacies of electricity, and who understands most of the betting systems ever devised, has combined his knowledge and training in an invention of a totalisator now being constructed at the Amplion works at Slough. It has been described as the “Robot bookmaker.” A great technician told me that the most stringent tests have shown that Mr. Hamilton’s ideas are thoroughly sound and practicable, says a writer in'the “Evening News.” The technician showed me a part of the machine. It is really the heart of this new tote., which has been under tests. It has dealt with millions of figures, pumped into it at electrical speed during the past few months. “There has not been a hitch.” he said. “We have tried to beat the machine with electricity, but it has beaten us.”

The working of this totalisator in simple language is this: Electrical impulses are used on very similar lines to those at an automatic telephone exchange. When a. call is made these impulses pick out the number required. It is on a similar basis that bets are registered on this totalisator. If, for example, you go to the booth and i>ut a pound on a horse, a ticket is given to you—stamped with the amount of the bet and the number of the horse as indicated by the “tote. ’ The stamping process causes an electrical movement similar to that at a telephone exchange. The pound —in electrical figures —goes to the pool which is being formed for the race. It also goes—again in electrical figures —to the particular calculating device for the horse you have backed. But there is something much more important. It also goes to a logarythmic apparatus —somewhat similar to the sliding rules used by modern schoolboys—which in a flash works out the odds. This schoolboys’ rule is the heart ot the machine. It takes into account the money on every horse. It does not forget the pool, and infallibly it registers the odds on every horse. It goes still further. It is connected with a device which may be called a thermometer scale of o<*:. It is a giant red pointer working on the lace of the machine which tells the public the odds prevailing at that moment on every horse. As bets are registered so these pointers rise or fall on the scale of odds. . The backer, when he takes out bis ■ticket, need not have the odds registered on it. If, for example, the horse he is backing is shown on the thermometer at 4 to 1 at that moment, and he thinks it may start at 6 to 1, he can retain his ticket without odds being stamped on it, and if he '" r in= draw money at the starting price, it the starting price is 6 to 1 he is lucky. , If, however, he has taken out a ticket when the betting was 4 to 1 and the thermometer later shows greater odds —odds which he thinks may fall considerably before the start —he can go to the booth at any moment when he wishes before the start of the race and have his ticket stamped at the odds ruling at that moment. , So ingenious is this tote that when the ticket is stamped with the odds it will show exactly how much the backer has to draw in the event of his horse winning.