Dream Recorder

What does a millisecond mean in sports timekeeping?

- Caroline Suganda

How significant is time? To a chef, a minute is the time needed to ruin an otherwise perfectly al dente pasta. To a young entrepreneur-aspirant, thirty seconds are all that’s needed to nail (or not!) that elevator pitch. To an athlete, a split-second on the clock could be the difference between a gold and a silver medal.

As every athlete’s dream hangs on every split-second that defines their entire destiny and aspiration of those who compete, measuring time is of the essence. Precision is vital and results must be indisputable.

But measuring time itself takes time. One of the earlier inventions that helped with the accuracy of sports timekeeping was introduced by Swiss watchmaker, Longines, in 1878. It was a pocket watch that housed Longines’s first chronograph movement, the Calibre 20H, which was capable of measuring time to the nearest second. That timepiece propelled the watchmaker to play a significant role in the American equestrian racecourses, a sport that the brand is synonymous with today.

Since then, sports timekeeping is at the beating heart of the brand. At its headquarters at Saint-Imier, Switzerland, the said pocket watch is kept in its in-house museum along with other important milestones, including a miniature model of the “broken wire” automatic system invented in 1912 and the Contifort system produced in 1956. The former is an electromechanical sports timer that starts and stops time when the wires at the starting and finishing line are broken (by the athlete running through it) respectively, the latter is capable of combining moving images with a timing mechanism to locate the athlete’s exact position at any given time.