He had made the watch in order to accurately measure the time it took for stars to cross the lens of a telescope, for the purpose of astronomical research. In 1816, six years before Rieussec, a fellow Frenchman Louis Moinet had made a watch called the “compteur de tierces” (1/60 second counter), which showed the passage of time with hands, much like a modern stop watch. In May 2012 however, a watch put up for sale at auction in Geneva by the world-renowned auction house Christie’s turned this theory on its head. This was the first time that results were recorded based on finishing times, rather than the order in which the horses crossed the line. Rieussec’s chronograph was used at the Champ de Mars Racecourse, on the site where the Eiffel Tower is now located. It was close to the literal definition of chronograph, meaning “to record time”. The user could then work out the time based on the length of the arc. Throughout the time the horse was running, ink would flow from the pen and draw an arc on the watch face. When measuring time, the arm would be brought down over the dial, which would turn when the user started timing. It had a small pen attached to the arm at the top right of the photo. Rieussec’s stopwatch was a far cry from the modern-day equivalent. Until just a few years ago, it was widely accepted that world’s first stopwatch was made by Nicolas Mathieu Rieussec in 1822, at the order of King Louis XVIII, following the restoration of royalty in France.Īs the king was a keen fan of horseracing, the purpose of this watch was to record the times of individual horses. Both types of devices are nonetheless required to perform the same five functions.ġ.They can be started and stopped at any time, and can measure the time elapsed.Ģ.They can be reset to zero in order to take continuous measurements.ģ.They can take continuous measurements in the smallest units required for competitive events.Ĥ.They can take split times, and measure times for multiple competitors. It is worth taking a moment to briefly explain constitutes of a stopwatch.Īlthough most modern-day stopwatches are quartz digital devices, the first stopwatches were mechanical analog devices with hands to display the time. The word chronometer is also used to refer to watches that have been certified to meet Swiss precision standards. A prime example is the marine chronometer, an essential item of equipment for accurate and safe navigation at sea. Combining the Greek words “chronos”, meaning “time”, and “graphos”, meaning “to write” or “to record”, the name chronograph literally means “a device to record time”.Ī similar word is “chronometer”, which refers to a device used to express time extremely accurately. Stopwatch functionality wasn’t built in to conventional watches however until a complex watch called the “chronograph” came along. We all know the stopwatch as a device used to measure the passage of time, in sports for instance.
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