Breakthrough moments in timekeeping history: from the 1816 chronograph to chips and photo finishes

The history of timekeeping is more than a list of inventions. It is a series of answers to specific questions: who won, how can it be proved and how can it be measured fairly? Here is a timeline of the most important milestones.

Timeline

• 1816: Louis Moinet built the compteur de tierces, an astronomical instrument accurate to 1/60 of a second.
• 1821: Nicolas Mathieu Rieussec unveiled a chronograph with an ink marker for timing horse races.
• 1912: electrical timing equipment appeared at the Stockholm Olympics as a backup to handheld stopwatches.
• 1916 and 1920: the Heuer Mikrograph measured hundredths of a second, and the brand served as official timekeeper at the 1920, 1924 and 1928 Olympics.
• 1932: Omega became the first brand to manage timekeeping at the Los Angeles Olympics, using 30 stopwatches; a Kirby camera with a time stamp was also used.
• 1948: a photocell and a photo-finish camera from the British company Race Finish Recording were deployed at the London Olympics.
• 1964: Seiko deployed an electronic system in Tokyo accurate to one-hundredth of a second.
• 1967 and 1968: Omega introduced swimming touchpads, which were used at the Olympics in Mexico.
• 1972: Swiss Timing was established, there was a tie in the luge at Sapporo, and two thousandths separated competitors in Munich.
• 1982: Haarlem-based AMB i.t. created a transponder timing system for model cars.
• 1990: Omega Scan'O'Vision, a digital photo-finish system.
• 1993 and 1994: ChampionChip and its first large-scale deployment at the Berlin Marathon.
• 1999: a young Sönke Petersen begins the RACE RESULT project, which will grow into today’s company.
• 2008: AMB and ChampionChip merge to form the MYLAPS brand.
• 2024: Omega uses cameras capable of capturing up to 40,000 frames per second at the Paris Olympics.

Behind every milestone was a dispute

Photo finishes gained traction because of horse racing, touchpads because of Rome 1960, and timing to thousandths because of luge in 1972. Read the stories in Swimming: touchpads and thousandths of a second and Curiosities and errors in timekeeping.

From stopwatches to chips

We also tell the story from antiquity to the present in How races were timed 100 and 1,000 years ago. The companies behind the technology are covered in Official timekeepers, while the people are explored in The timekeeper: a profession and its evolution.

The next breakthrough: software

Hardware is becoming less expensive, while the intelligence is moving into software. Today, an organizer can handle race timing with a phone and inexpensive chips. TAQIO is one step in this direction: a race-timing app supporting taps, QR, NFC and RFID that also works offline.