Bet Selling at NSWTAB using NCR and BID
Note: this article was prepared with assistance from Ralph Walsh and Terry Bear
NCR
[See also Photo Albums: Section Three]
The first ticketing machines used by the TAB when Off-Course-Betting was introduced to New South Wales in 1964 was a National Cash Register (NCR) machine from West Germany. This machine was an adaptation of a unit not unlike amechanical adding machine that required keys to be depressed for the numerals and a handle to be wound to get the result. The NSW machines had electric power but retained the handle for emergency use. There were two registers and three banks of keys with the register selector or lever to the left hand side for the operator. Register one: up, was for Win and Place and register two: down, was for Double and Quinella. Using register one the first bank of keys was for Win units, the second bank horse numbers and the third bank Place units. At register two the first and second banks became horse numbers and the third remained units. At commencement in 1964 a 25 cents unit applied. Banks one and three had large number and field protection covers or caps over the relevant keys. Bank two had protection for the field button.
The customers' bet slip was inserted into a slot in the machine and a button was pressed to activate the device. The bet details were printed on the top and bottom portions of the ticket as well as on an audit tape. A ticket identification number also printed. In a power disruption the machines could be operated using the handle and it could be claimed that this was the first form of emergency selling for the NSWTAB.
Some offices had up to 12 of these machines on the counter. Angel Arcade, in the Central Business District, was the largest.
The betting slip was in two parts. The customer wrote their bet detail in the top right hand corner of the ticket or called it to the seller. The machine printed the details on the two halves of the ticket that was then torn into two with one half, after cost calculation and payment, being given to the customer and the other half sorted into a box for later manual collation in the office. Betting closed up to 40 minutes before advertised race start (ARS) to permit collations for win/place. It was one hour for Doubles, and Quinella betting initially closed up to 3 hours prior to ARS.
The bet tickets were progressively collected from the selling area and sorted by meeting and race on benches at the rear of the office. At race close time the last sales for the respective race were collected from the selling area and two staff set about counting the total race investments for the office, each person checked the tickets for meeting (colour coded: pink = Sydney Races or Gallops, blue = Melbourne Races, old gold = Sydney Greyhounds, etc.) then Race Number and finally Horse Number before commencing the actual count of investments. For greater accuracy, one person (the collator) counted the win investments then the place investments and entered them on a sheet, the second person (the checker) counted and combined the win units and the place units together and entered that total on another sheet. When both people finished the collator would mentally add the win and place investments together and compare the figure with the checker, both rechecking their additions if agreement was not reached. The figureswere phoned into District Centres where collations combining the investments of up to 24 offices were performed and then a District Total was communicated to Control Centre where all District Centre figures were added to become a final State total of investment on each horse for transmission to the Oncourse Totalisator (Regulations initially required these figures to reach the racecourse 10 minutes before the ARS of the respective race).
Each NCR machine had its own ink reservoir and a wick arrangement to pass the ink from the reservoir to the machine ribbon for quality print on the ticket and an audit roll. A set of counters in the machine and an audit tape createdan audit trail should something require investigation. A logbook was retained with each machine where these details were recorded by handwritten entry. In the initial operations the machines were also fitted with a time clock incorporating a record tape. As each race closed the seller placed a blank ticket for the respective race into the NCR machine and activated the clock, a zero value ticket was printed and collators attached these tickets to the race collation sheets as a protection against illegal issue of tickets after the result of the race was run. Regional Managers and Inspectors were initially required to wind these clocks on a monthly basis but the clocks were removed when the number of offices in operation made the task too onerous.
To increase selling speeds NCR operators were permitted to read the customers information from the tickets, bulk tear the tickets and then to sort them, or to bulk tear the tickets and leave them for another person to sort. Finally two-up selling where one person sold the tickets and the second person counted the value of the bets and collected the money. In the early days of TAB a good seller could achieve between 400 to 600 tickets per hour. Some sellers were later credited with up to 1,100 tickets per hour.
Despite the protection of large unit and field button covers error tickets occurred and when the customers intent couldn’t be interpreted they had to be reported first to the District Centre and Control Centre for a ruling. Large unit bets, i.e. 101 units etc., were directed to be collated as issued and the seller held responsible for the cash shortage should the bet not be correct. Errors with Field shown on Double or Quinella bets were not uncommon and again the seller was held responsible. Whilst not permitted, Field with the Field tickets were issued in some offices, i.e. all the runners in the first leg of a double coupled with all the runners in the second leg or a Quinella where a unit had to be added to every combination in the collation. A 12 horse Quinella had 66 combinations and an 18 horse Quinella 153. These tickets in the hands of an experienced person caused no problems but were beyond the scope of those less experienced and often caused immense problems. The other problem was if the ticket was issued at an incorrect value and if the seller had left for home having processed one, they were likely to receive a phone call at home with a ‘please explain’ demand from the Manager.
One of the major limitations of NCR operations was the handling of collations and as the requirement increased to expand the number of outlets, it was seen to be necessary to improve the method of transmission and collation and a system that permitted an "on‑line" operation. In 1971 anIBM 360/44 computer was installed and on‑line operations commenced. Telex machines were installed into country offices, where NCR selling continued, for direct collation transmission to the Head Office computer.
It is interesting to note that the IBM 360 computer being used had about as much memory storage, 128K, as some calculators carry today. The Flight terminal introduced in 1991 had four times this memory capacity.
Apart from Broken Hill, that continued to use the machines for sales on South Australian racing, the last NCR tickets were processed at Bermagui on 7 November 1979. The Broken Hill arrangements finally ceased 10 December 1983, meaning the NCR devices had served NSW customers for 19 years and one day.
The BID System
This system was again based on a German cash register type of machine with an electronic console or controller added for bet input. BID stands for Bet Input Device although some may claim ‘Branch’ Input Device.
AWA were contracted to develop the console and BID printer interface in conjunction with Diehl Data Systems who devised the modifications to the printer so that two paper rolls could be fitted, one for the ticket to be issued to the customer, the other for an audit roll copy. An address 'slug' was fitted so that the identity of the outlet could be printedon each ticket to identify the point of purchase and a guillotine arrangement was devised to cut each ticket into a single slip for the customer.
Customers again wrote their selections by hand onto a slip that was handed to the operator. It was not unusual for customers to call their bets to the operator who then keyed them directly into the console. This was achieved by a numeric keypad mounted on the console and the operator entered a numeric code for the meeting code, race type and bet type. For example, 112 or 113 and so on, where the first 1 was for Sydney, the second 1 was for Races and the 2 was for the bet type. In this case, it was a Daily Double.
The consoles had somebutton switches fitted so that the meeting selection could be held, (Meeting Hold Buttons). This permitted a string of bets on the same meeting to be entered so that the same information did not need to he keyed over and over again.
Liability counters were fitted to the console so that acheck on the number of units sold for the day could be actioned when balancing at the end of the day.
The console could add batches of bets automatically and the ABT (the All Bets Total) was displayed via a set of Nixi Tubes. This tube was one of the first types of numeric display devices used in electronics. Each tube had the 0 to 9 series of numerals wired up inside so that when one of these wire numerals was charged with 200 volts, the gas inside the tube ionised and created a glow around the wire.
Operators could achieve a speed of just over 1000 bets per hour and although this was a little slower than the NCR machine, no collating was required and betting was permitted up to 10 minutes from the official start time and this was shortened to 5 minutes during 1979.
This BID system was connected to the Head Office Computer the IBM 360/44 via a direct copper pair connection rented from Telecom. Each BID had its own connection.
A TTY (Teletype) (KSR 27) machine was installed for messages. It operated on a separate line to that of the BID terminal.
This style of connection had its limitations regarding the distance it could operate over and, consequently, the Metropolitan area out to Blacktown, Liverpool and Hornsby were the outer limits. Blacktown, for example, was still operating with the NCR machines up to 1977 when the next generation of terminals was introduced. Some extension to these distances was achieved with the introduction of the Modem, a device which "digitised" the signal so that it could he sent overa much greater distance.
The BID system remained with the TAB from 1971 until the last BID ticket was sold at the Bondi Beach office 19th June 1982. Over 900 BID units had been installed throughout the Sydney environs.
During the last few years of BID operation spare parts for the printer presented difficulties and local industry around suburban Sydney was canvassed so that the crucial parts could he specially manufactured. Much time and effort was expended in testing and remaking some of these components to keep the printers operating and the best figures obtained for reliability was around 8 weeks mean time between failure which equated to around 9,000 tickets per fault. Generallythefigure was averaging below 5,000 tickets per fault. This compared to the later Flight terminal that averaged in excess of 25,000 tickets per fault.
