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ELECTRIC TIMING DEVICE Recording Clock in Use in England Said to 83 Infallibly Correct One of the most difficult things in the world Is to time races correctly tho reason being that before the finger can press tho button of the watch it must receive a mes ¬ sage from the brain which must first re ¬ ceive a message from the eye eyeThe The time which these two messages take to travel varies considerably in different people and may differ in the same person from day to day Hence it is almost impos ¬ sible for any human being to be sure of timing a race correctly to a tenth of a sec ¬ ond ondAccurate Accurate timing can be obtained with cer ¬ tainty only by means of the electrical timing machine now in use on one or two English pedestrian courses though the time test for racing is thoroughly rejected in that con ¬ servative land landAt At the starting point of the running course is a fine wire which is broken as the pistol is fired At the winning post is another wire which the winner severs as he breaks the tape The first sets an electric recording clock in motion and the second stops it itThe The clock consists of a drum making a certain number of revolutions per second on whose surface rests the point of a fixed pen When the drum is set in motion by tho breaking of the starting wire the pen begins to trace a spiral line upon it and continues to do so until the mechanism is stopped by the breaking of the second wire The length of the line traced on the drum gives tho exact time of the race raceSo So delicate and so accurate is this device that it can measure the time that a bullet takes to pass from the chamber to the muzzle of a rifle but for the purposes of sport one tenth of a second is the smallest division in actual use
