On 4/18/15 7:02 AM, Bob Camp wrote:
Hi
Many years ago while standing around (between races) with some pretty good
stopwatches, a group of us decided to see
just how well a set of people could time the same pair of start / stop events.
Our conclusion was that as a
group we could get agreement to +/- 1/5 second pretty consistently once we
practiced a bit.
The obv
Hence the reason that horse races are traditionally timed in 1/5th
second increments. (1/5th second is also about 1 stride for a race
horse at full gallop 3.5-4 m/stride... 17 m/s)
a bit of googling turns up
https://books.google.com/books?id=PlQkH-OxxucC&lpg=PT489&ots=l0HxdHUOJp&dq=horse%20race%20timing%20stopwatch%20history&pg=PT489#v=onepage&q=horse%20race%20timing%20stopwatch%20history&f=false
"Stopwatches timing to 1/5 second were being used to time races befor
1731, by which time they were in commercial production, seven years
befor ethe earliest use of 'stop-watch' known to the OED"
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