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.
- origin
- Invented in 1816 to time horse races
- precision
- Mechanical ones can split seconds into hundredths
- factory weapon
- Used to time and squeeze worker movements
- split function
- Lap times recorded without stopping the clock
- olympic past
- Hand-timed races until the 1960s electronics
omega seamaster stopwatch — official timekeeper for olympics since 1932, used in swimming and track events
heuer autavia — mechanical chronograph worn by formula 1 drivers in the 1960s-70s, especially jack heuer's racing team