Ted Both scoreboards used for Davis Cup tennis in hometown Adelaide and at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics
Ted Both's design for the 1956 Melbourne Olympics scoreboard and (inset) Both with one of the 7x5 globe modules that made up the thousands to convey the Games event information.
The scoreboard design for the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne was by prolific Adelaide inventor Ted Both. Both, called the “Edison of Australia”, already had made remarkable contributions to medical technology from his Adelaide laboratory in the 1930s, with his electrocardiograph (ECG) and “iron lung” respirator for polio patients being the most prominent of many inventions in this and other fields.
Among his many other inventions, produced at the laboratory near Adelaide University with his brother Don, were an electric-powered van to overcome World War II fuel shortages, an incubator for premature babies and the Visitel machine (1940-41) allowing drawings to be transmitted over long distances via a phone line. During World War II, Both continued inventing devices, including medical equipment such as the cardiograph that became standard military equipment.
After the war, Ted Both stayed in Sydney where he set up a branch of Both Equipment in 1947 that worked with the Automatic Totalisators Company. He and brother Don were keen tennis players and they agreed to make a scoreboard for the Davis Cup round in Adelaide in 1952.
They subsequently produced scoreboards for a range of sports including horse racing totalisators, where the Visitel was used to transmit the judge’s signature to the totes to authenticate results.
This activity culminated in the design of the scoreboard for the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne. The scoreboard signalled its information using many 7x5 globe modules, made up of 10,000 globes in the results area and more than 4,000 in the heading area. Each module was operated by a switch for selecting the letters and numbers to be displayed. Ted Both designed a simple effective switch to enable this. As each module had to be changed at its location, several operators were needed.
