Free online stopwatch
Stopwatch is an accurate device for measuring the time interval with an error of a fraction of a second (1/10 and 1/100 sec.).
Stopwatch history
It is difficult to say when exactly a person needed such accuracy, but if the stopwatch was invented, it means that someone needed it. The first chronograph was invented by the watchmaker Jean-Moisé Pouzait in 1776. However, according to the official version, the history of these devices begins in 1821. This year, French master Nicolas-Mathieu Rieussec presented a chronograph to King Louis Philippe I to watch horse racing. TAG Heuer's stopwatch was close to a modern mechanical device, it appeared in 1869 in Switzerland.
Until the middle of the last century, the stopwatch was a simple mechanical device with one button for starting and stopping the countdown. The device gradually became more complex until it acquired the form of a high-precision electronic stopwatch with a set of working functions.
Interesting Facts
- There are 31,556,926 seconds in a year.
- At the V Olympic Games in 1932 in Los Angeles, the judges determined the time to an accuracy of 1/5 of a second using mechanical stopwatches. In 1968, electronic devices were used at the Mexico City Olympics.
- The accuracy of the first stopwatches in one tenth or one hundredth of a second seems very approximate compared to the capabilities of new technologies - up to 1/10000 of a second and even more accurate.
- In auto racing and in other cases, when the count goes for a fraction of a second, meters with a laser notching of the finish moment are used. Their accuracy is not less than 1/1000 sec.
If you need to measure the time interval to the nearest second, use our stopwatch. Timing is very simple, the controls are standard: start, stop, pause, restart.
