Tote Boards: The engineering of horse gambling

ATL's head office and factory used to be in Meadowbank, Sydney, a few minutes from where I grew up. The old building is still there, though ATL is not. There's lots more history and better photos than the hackaday article at the following link, written by an ex ATL employee.

http://members.ozemail.com.au/~bconlon/atl.htm

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Don't forget to go up one level to

http://members.ozemail.com.au/~bconlon/index.html

for a comprehensive collection of further pictures and text.

I used to know some people who had worked for American Totalisator in Baltimore. It got a somewhat later start, 1927. One of the programmers spoke of a special-purpose programming language devised there, "Totran".

Maybe I'm missing something. How are these machines not more widely considered as one of the early examples of computers?

We have Babbage's difference engine, and then usually the story goes straight to ENIAC.

Hackaday article links to another with additional images and info.

http://www.rutherfordjournal.org/article020109.html