INGENIOUS MACHINE

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 70, 19 September 1936, Page 22

INGENIOUS MACHINE

A SINE-SCALE BAROMETER Patrons of the .Wellington Racing Club's Meetings during, the past few years have now become thoroughly familiar with the mode-of showing, the dividends being paid from time to time on the manual win and place baro-. meter indicators, so it may be a surprise to many to learn that the barometers on the new Julius totalisator, which will be operating for the first time at the club's Spring Meeting next month, will indicate the dividends iri a somewhat different way. In principle the mode of indication is the same, but there are two important dif--1 erences that racegoers ,will require to become acouainted with in following the progress of the betting. The new Julius barometer will be identical with that now operating at Riccarton, except that the colours of the win and the' place indicator nb-i bonswill remain the same as they are. at present at Trentham, that is orange for win and green for place; in black ' channels. At Riccarton the combination is black and yellow in red channels. Racegoers who have been at Riccarton during the last twelve months will therefore have little trouble in adjusting themselves to the new Trentham totalisator. THE FIRST DIFFERENCE.

Contrasted with "the manual indicator that has been in use at recent meetings at Trentham, the first difference in the new barometer is that the dividend scale .reads from the top down, instead of from the bottom up. The graduation for £l, for example, will be near the top of the barometer, for £2 a little lower down, for £3 still lower down, and so on till the £IOO graduation is reached near the bottom of-the barometer. For dividends over £IOO the tapes will be down at the "bottom of the channels and will not be specifically indicated, except as being over £IOO. The public will need to accustom themselves first to this .change from the old mode. The second essential difference is that the scale on the barometer indicating the dividends is ■ not evenly graduated, as it has been up to £lO on the manual barometer, with diminishing graduations only for amounts over £lO. The new scale is one of diminishing graduations for every step in the scale, with the graduations closing very fast beyond £2O. The widest graduation is from £1 to £2, it is a little smaller from £2 to £3, still smaller from £3 to £4, and so to £l2, after which the scale can be marked only it longer periods because of the diminishing size of the graduations, these markings being £ls, £2O, £25, £3O, £SO, and £IOO. For intermediate dividends the line of the ribbons will lie between the figures and must therefore be estimated, which may be done approximately with the eye, though above £3O the scale has so far diminished that an accurate approximation is hardly possible. Still bettors will not worry greatly about this when the horse/ they backed is paying, say, between £SO and £loo—unless they are set wondering why the .horse is paying so much! REASON FOR CHANGE. , the question that racegoers will undoubtedly be asking each other when they first see the new totalisator operating is why the barometer scale should not be evenly graduated, at least up to £lO or £2O, as it was on the manual barometer pijrviously in use. The answer is that it is not possible, so far as human ingenuity has yet conceived, to do this on an electrical apparatus that does all its own adding, subtraction of totalisator >, and dividend taxation, calculation of exact dividend being paid at every moment that the totalisator is doing business, and instantaneous display of the dividend on the barometers. . It would require too deep an incursion into the realms of mathematics and mechanics, without touching on electricity, to explain,why dividends •have to be indicated as they are on the Julius totalisator. If a new mode of electrical indication is some day devised it will be on an entirely new principle. The scale on the Julius machine "is that known in mathematics; as a sine scale, which may be represented diagraraatically:—

Briefly it may- be. observed that the first perpendicular might indicate the second £5, and the last something near' £IOO. The perpendiculars (which are given by the ribbons'on the tofalisator barometer) increase in height as the angle whose sine -they represent approaches, though never actually reaches, 90 degrees of a circle, but they increase in a rapidly-diminishing ratio. A TREMENDOUS STRIDE. I The first all-electric totalisator in-1 vented by Sir George; Julius (thei machine that has been in operation at many Dominion courses during the, last twenty years), ingenious as it was, could record only totals, on the individual horses and in aggregate, from which racegoers ' were required ■'■ to estimate the dividend for themselves. With the adoption of'the totalisator in England and Am'erica, and also its wider use in Australia," and.with the; demand at the larger courses for win-and-place betting, it became necessary to Tdevise something that would give the public more information, and the result was that Sir George Julius contrived a machine that not only would add electrically, but also would calculate and record actual dividends. The new machine is therefore a really tremendous stride ahead ofthe old electrical machine, intricate and ingenious though it was. '■■■■■■._■ , > The principle on which Sir George has worked ,to turn the additions into dividends is the trigonometrical conception of the sine. Although not strictly the definition, the sine of an angle (in a rightrangled triangle) may be taken as the decimal ratio obtained when the side opposite the given angle (that is,, the perpendicular in the diagram above) is divided by the hypotenuse (i.e., of the right-angled triangle). Sir George" .has secured the right-angled , triangle in hi%new totalisator by means of vertical and horizontal rods along which special parts of the adding units move, vertically, according to the total investments on the machine (win or place), and horizontally according to the investments on the particular adding unit (i.e., horse). A free arm swings below the unit to represent the hypotenuse, of the triangle so formed,-and it.is the variations in the angl&'formed by .the hypotenuse arm with the horizontal that are passed on to the dividend-calculating unit, which controls the ribbons on the barometer.

The application of the principle has naturally not been so easy as it is to

state; but it is through this principle that it has been found possible instantaneously to record the dividends elec-' trically, instead of simply giving totals and allowing the public to estimate dividends, or having them calculated at intervals by the totalisator staff and displayed on a manual barometer, as in recent years at Trentham.. From this brief general description of the principle it may also be understood why the barometer graduations on the new machine form a sine-scale,"arid why such a scale is the only one possible for representation of the dividend on the Julius totalisator. It .will probably take racegoers some * time to become used to the new -, scale, but actually, with wide spaces for the short prices and "narrower ones for, the longer prices, it is really a.better scale for practical purposes than that which has been:used on the manual: indicator.