The joy of analog

[CookyMonzta]

Does anyone here have the urge to pull out that analog stopwatch whenever you go to a track meet or watch a meet on television? I, for one, have a soft spot for nostalgia...

...For which, last year I bought a Swatch Chrono wristwatch and an Ultrak 1000; and with my Swatch, I noticed something alarming...

...Barely a month (June 24) after resetting my Accusplit AX602 Pro digital watch, the clock is now 4.5 seconds behind the U.S. Atomic Clock...

...But my Swatch Chrono is only 3.7 seconds behind. The problem here is, I haven't had to reset my Swatch since December 31! My Swatch is probably going to lose only 6.5 seconds to the atomic clock over the course of a full year. The digital Accusplit? Nearly a minute! >:-X

If the accuracy of the Accusplit is that bad when it comes to regular time, you can bet it is just as bad for its stopwatch mode. The reverse is true when it comes to the accuracy of the Swatch. Is there a more accurate watch than Swatch for as low as $120?

I find myself using the Swatch more and more when it comes to the track, especially in races 400 and longer. The accuracy of the time on my analog watch, against the official time, doesn't concern me because it is all the same with a digital watch; except in this case my analog watch is more accurate than my digital. It makes me wonder just how accurate the Chronomix cc707 was, 37 years ago. This was the stopwatch the New York City PSAL used when I ran HS track.

[By the way, I haven't given my Ultrak 1000 an accuracy test just yet.]

[dukehjsteve]

Memory Lane :

Back in the late 50's the only stop watches I ever saw were in the hands of Track coaches and teachers acting as officials at our local high school meets. Then my Big Bro and started our 5 years of intense at-home competitions involving the Shot Put, Long Jump, and High Jump utilizing our back and side yard and the multi-use pit I threw together in 1960. We even constructed a points table for these 3 events, plus the key 4th event, a 52 yard dash from the back fence to the end of the front porch. So we had to buy a stop watch ! As we called it, the Barnes Athletic Club Quadathlon."

Consulting the Archives, the Field records are HJ 6'1 1/2", LJ 20 '3/4". SP ( 12 lb.) 40'6", and 52 yd. dash, 6.0. Hint: the poster here holds the first 3 records. My point total record 269.5 for a single competition, 6' 1", 18' 10", 39' 1', 6.5 . June 9, 1964 . Age 21 .

[Mr. Bowie]

Memory Lane :

Back in the late 50's the only stop watches I ever saw were in the hands of Track coaches and teachers acting as officials at our local high school meets. Then my Big Bro and started our 5 years of intense at-home competitions involving the Shot Put, Long Jump, and High Jump utilizing our back and side yard and the multi-use pit I threw together in 1960. We even constructed a points table for these 3 events, plus the key 4th event, a 52 yard dash from the back fence to the end of the front porch. So we had to buy a stop watch ! As we called it, the Barnes Athletic Club Quadathlon."

Consulting the Archives, the Field records are HJ 6'1 1/2", LJ 20 '3/4". SP ( 12 lb.) 40'6", and 52 yd. dash, 6.0. Hint: the poster here holds the first 3 records. My point total record 269.5 for a single competition, 6' 1", 18' 10", 39' 1', 6.5 . June 9, 1964 . Age 21 .

Wow....and I thought I was intense with hurdling in the drive way and a high jump pit in the back yard!

[CookyMonzta]

Memory Lane :

Back in the late 50's the only stop watches I ever saw were in the hands of Track coaches and teachers acting as officials at our local high school meets. Then my Big Bro and started our 5 years of intense at-home competitions involving the Shot Put, Long Jump, and High Jump utilizing our back and side yard and the multi-use pit I threw together in 1960. We even constructed a points table for these 3 events, plus the key 4th event, a 52 yard dash from the back fence to the end of the front porch. So we had to buy a stop watch ! As we called it, the Barnes Athletic Club Quadathlon."

Consulting the Archives, the Field records are HJ 6'1 1/2", LJ 20 '3/4". SP ( 12 lb.) 40'6", and 52 yd. dash, 6.0. Hint: the poster here holds the first 3 records. My point total record 269.5 for a single competition, 6' 1", 18' 10", 39' 1', 6.5 . June 9, 1964 . Age 21 .

I'm guessing that analog stopwatches back then were quite expensive, yes? I wonder how expensive, compared to 1981 and today.

My coach Z (Ed Zarowin) at Brooklyn Tech had both an analog stopwatch and an LED Cronus. Back then the analogs would run for just as much as they do today (his was $85), and the Cronus was around $50 back then. As I remember, those Cronus watches were not very reliable when it came to timing 3,200m/2 miles. At one point, the splits he called out were approaching 1 second faster than the splits I saw on my LCD wristwatch, and the official time was closer to the time on my watch than on his Cronus. [He had more than one Cronus, some were better than others.]

You would think that, after 37 years, the digital stopwatch companies would have this accuracy thing figured out by now. Most are much better now than they were back then, but they still need more work. I reset my Accusplit AX602 last month, and it is already 5 seconds slower than the U.S. Atomic Clock. That's a full minute slower for a full year, give or take maybe 5 seconds. I've got digital wristwatches that could be as much as a second faster or slower per day!

Alarmingly, my analog Swatch Chrono, which I reset just before the beginning of this year, has given away less than 4 seconds today. That amounts to less than 7 seconds for a full year! I don't even have to reset this watch again until Christmas! Again, if there's a more accurate watch out there, digital or analog, for $120, I'd like to know.

The PSAL used the Chronomix cc707 stopwatch printing system in the 1980s. I don't remember if they ever wired the device to the gun (making it semi-automatic); but in any case, the contraption rounded every result (from the individual finish timers) to the next 1/10 of a second before printing. The PSAL went fully automatic in 1991.

I don't remember exactly how much it was back then (but it was definitely advertised in T&FN back then, but my magazines are hard to get at right now :-( ), but I think it was around $600. Nowadays, a FinishLynx system will cost you $5,000, unless you want to go the semi-automatic route and get a Sprint8 system for $1,000. How accurate are these top-of-the-line track watches today, compared to the analog watches of old or the ancient LED stopwatches from companies like the now-defunct Cronus (the name of which I assume was once owned and now long-abandoned by Accusplit)?

[Atticus]

This was my prized possession from age 6 (when I'd time my dad on the highway between mile markers to see how close he could hold 60mph - and then time track meets) till age 25 when I saw/bought my first digit 1/100 chronograph/watch in 1976.

https://www.stopwatches-exactime.nl/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/1220401-Hanhart-Stopwatch.jpg

[gh]

I'm guessing that analog stopwatches back then were quite expensive, yes? I wonder how expensive, compared to 1981 and today......

T&FN for many years was the nation's largest seller of stopwatches (or at least that's what I was told when I got hired).

The January '62 edition has an ad where we were selling the Hanhart Split 30 (a famous watch in its time) for "half of suggested retail": $31.75

In the January '71 issue we were offering the same watch for $43.75 (with "special school price" of $39.95)

In the January '76 issue there's an ad (not ours) by Cronus, offering 3 different watches, for $185, $125 and $59.95.The base model came with 60 minutes (!) of battery life.

[Halfmiler2]

I recall that inexpensive spring stopwatches that you could buy at places like Sears were not very accurate. I did not mind at all when digital watches arrived in the 1970s.

[Mr. Bowie]

I recall that inexpensive spring stopwatches that you could buy at places like Sears were not very accurate. I did not mind at all when digital watches arrived in the 1970s.

The best stopwatches of my youth in the 1950s--by best I mean those that yielded the fastest times--were what we called the "Tijuana" stop watches, ones that were bought Sud of de Border in TJ for single-digit dollar amounts and banged around in the coaches' desk top drawers during the off season and became "seasoned" (rendered practically useless. We always like to pretend that 50-yard wind sprints routinely clocked in 5.4 or so were legit, ha ha ha.

[CookyMonzta]

After going an entire year without resetting my watches (to the second), it turns out that analog may yet still be king...

Casio WS-1000H Wristwatch: +5:14 (5 minutes and 14 seconds ahead of the U.S. Atomic Clock after a full year)

Casio W-734 Wristwatch: +4:04

Accusplit AX602 Stopwatch: -:35 (35 seconds behind)

Swatch Chrono SUSB103 Wristwatch: -:10

Why pay $1,000 or more for a watch, when you can get world-class accuracy for $150 or less? I bought my Swatch 5½ years ago, and it has had only one battery change.