Gambling long has inspired technological innovation. More than 2...

gambling channel -- but the system has roots in an audio innovation developed in the U.S. about 60 years ago. Sky’s channel is a virtual Las Vegas generated by computers in a U.K. studio and includes betting on horse races. But because horses don’t run 24/7, the races can’t be live. Pony aficionados in the U.K. already have gala dinners at which the guests bet on film or video footage of old races. The organizers find recordings of old races at obscure tracks and reckon no one in the house can know the winning mount. But there aren’t enough obscure recordings to keep all of Sky’s bettors in the dark and all the time, so the satellite programmer is airing virtual racing. Computer-generated horses run round a computer-generated track, past computer-generated crowds and scenery, and a computer program decides which horse will win. Unlike with real horse racing, there’s none of the form-studying and skill-spotting usually indulged in by horse bettors. The outcome of Sky’s races is simply up to chance. But what Sky presents as innovation is actually an old idea, conceived in the U.S. and an attraction of bookie parlors in the 1940s. At the time, a record company pressed shellac 78 rpm discs with 2 grooves per side instead of one, tightly interleaved in 2 spiral tracks. It was pure chance which groove the needle followed when the mechanical pickup arm was lowered. One groove had a race commentary with a particular horse winning, and the 2nd groove had a different commentary and a different winner. So, fanatics in the gambling joints could bet the ponies even when no live races were running. Such novelty disc pressings found an afterlife as family parlor games, and even music recordings. One example, a “Horseless Horse Racing” family game, consisted of fictitious racing forms and multi-grooved records, with each groove featuring a different outcome of the race. More recently, the Monty Python team in 1973 released what the troupe touted as the “first 3-sided LP.” The title, Matching Tie and Handkerchief, had 2 “B” sides, one with a double groove. Listeners heard different sketches depending on where the pickup stylus landed when the tonearm dropped. The album was never released with the trick side in the U.S., but we found a used import copy selling for $31 on the Internet last week. Other novelty discs with multiple, randomly accessed grooves have been issued over the years by MAD magazine, the comedians Cheech & Chong, the Harvard U. Lampoon, even contemporary hip-hop artist LL Cool J. Meanwhile, in the digital domain, CD and DVD technology allows random play of tracks, so discs theoretically could feature races with winners that depend on the luck of which track played first. But after a few plays the results become predictable once the race has begun, hence Sky’s decision to use a computer-generated system.