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Netters:
The first time I recall
auto-timing becoming a matter of public discussion followed Frank Budd's WR 9.2
at the AAU championships in NYC (either 1961 or 1962),. That race was auto-timed
by the Bulova system and Jesse Abramson, among others, reported that it was
clocked that way a 9.36.
I called the Bulova pR fellow
a day or so later anbd got an explanation of the difference which made
sense---the AT being set off by the impulse of the gun trigger which precded the
explosion heard by the runners.
When
our conference was running the Easterns at Jadwin Gym, the head timer, the late,
very-much-missed John Courtney, would hand me his book of hand times after the
meet. I was able to compare these with the aut-times and found that the
difference averaged no more than one-tenth of a second or so.
The
problem in comparing present ATs to the old HTs, of course, is that you didn';t
always have that good hand-timing. But remember that. until T&F News
came along to lead the emphasis on statistics, PRs and the like, only the first
place person in each event was timed so there was a better chance, at elast at
major meets, that the timing was quite accurate to the tenth. (Recall too that,
at one time, foir the longer races, times odd tenths were moved to the nearest
even one.
Once
we began to time everyone, things began tio fall apart, at least in the short
races where the tenths mean so much. Timers would be asked to take two runners,
1st and 4th, 2nd and 5th, etc. Not too bad in longer races with greater
intervals usual between the finishers, but a disaster for accurate timing of
sprints with five of six people coming across the line together. Impossible for
anyone to have th reflexes to give his second person a proper time.
Ed Grant
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