the.com/stopwatch
a tiny tyrant that turned human effort into a number you can't argue with
means a handheld timing device that can be started and stopped at will to measure elapsed time precisely, often to fractions of a second.
from A plain marriage of two old English words: "stop" (from Old English "stoppian," to plug or halt) and "watch" (from Old English "wæcce," a wakeful keeping, which by the 16th century had come to mean a small portable timepiece). The compound "stop-watch" appears in the early 19th century, naming exactly what it does — a watch you can stop dead on command.
originInvented in 1816 to time horse races
precisionMechanical ones can split seconds into hundredths
factory weaponUsed to time and squeeze worker movements
split functionLap times recorded without stopping the clock
olympic pastHand-timed races until the 1960s electronics