ira malott
Ira Merrell Malott was born on March 5, 1898, in Mt. Orab, Ohio. Shortly after his birth his family moved to Sardinia, Ohio, a small agricultural community about 50 miles east of Cincinnati. Malott graduated at the top of his class at Sardinia High School in 1916 and had no further formal education. He worked several jobs in Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, including as carpenter on the Norfolk and Western Railway. In August 1921, Malott married the love of his life, Wanda Brady.
During the Second World War, Malott worked in procurement at the Jeffersonville, Indiana Army Depot. It was during this period he owned and raced harness horses in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Ohio.
Malott spent many hours at racetracks, paying close attention to the timing of races and noting how the results were often incorrect. He saw the need for a more precise race timing method which would eliminate the discrepancies found when using stopwatches.
In 1949, the Visumatic Timer Company was established with Malott as president of the firm. It operated in Louisville, Kentucky with two graduate electrical engineers on the staff and a large stock of electrical parts, wires, drills and equipment of all kinds. The original model of the Visumatic Timer was an oval design similar in shape to a racetrack. A crew of eight men working full time for three months was required to build the unit, which measured 8 feet by 16 feet. The Timer was tested at Fairgrounds Speedway in Louisville, where the track’s executive vice president General J. Fred Miles helped Malott iron out problems which occurred in early experiments, with the Visumatic engineers improving the invention’s design.
On November 27, 1951 the United States Trotting Association gave its enthusiastic approval to the device and the following year Malott secured a contract with Roosevelt Raceway on Long Island, New York. For the first time harness racing fans could see visual displays on the illuminated oval showing the times of a race. The left section showed the time for the quarter, the center section the half mile, with the three-quarter time on the right. At the bottom appeared the elapsed time for the entire mile. The Visumatic Timer also displayed how much time there was to bet before a race.
Photoelectric beams were installed across the track at the quarter poles. The beams were able to focus on the leading horse and ignore the starting gate. When the field of horses behind the starting gate passed it, the light beam was broken, setting in motion the visual timer which displayed the quarter, half mile, three-quarters and finish times.
The Roosevelt initiative would prove that manual timing with a stopwatch could vary as much as four-fifths of a second for the mile distance. Human error was eliminated with the use of the Visumatic.
Malott’s vision and his contribution to harness racing changed the sport forever.
Ira Malott died in Louisville, Kentucky on Nov. 12, 1975.