# Any Ideas What This Was Used For?



## Margot (May 19, 2009)

Morning! My husband bought this stop watch at the week-end; he was fascinated by it because it rotates in just three seconds - the smaller dial in the centre also has increments of three. Anyone any ideas what it might have been for - I did try to Google it and the only answer I came up with was they police sometimes used three second stop watches in the 1970s to record a car's travelling speed. There are numbers on the back of the case, 12326. Hope you can help.


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## mel (Dec 6, 2006)

Maybe someone will know Margot! My only observation is the (obviously aftermarket) applied "31" which is in a different font and crude, but is at the 50 marker, making it 50kph/approx. 31mph, so you could be right. Around 31 mph is the standard Euro speed limit in many EU countries , equivalent to 50 kph..

Mind, you'd need to be fast on the button to click it twice in three seconds or less!


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## JoT (Aug 12, 2003)

I remember these at school in the early 1970's for timing athletics, teh three second sweep allows you to read 1/10th second pretty accurately and 1/100th of a second reasonably accurately.

Yours has been modified and could well have been used by law enforcement


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## Uncle Alec (Feb 14, 2011)

I think you have stumbled across my sex timer.


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## mel (Dec 6, 2006)

Uncle Alec said:


> I think you have stumbled across my sex timer.


Funny, I was thinking about something like that, but I've forgotten exactly what ldman:


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## BondandBigM (Apr 4, 2007)

Probably used by Plod, as in time taken to travel a known distance = speed, they used to bullsh!t you with the two lamp posts one and also later with fixed marks on the road. the three seconds dial would make it more accurate and possibly between two lamp posts isn't going to be more if you are are exceeding 30mph. .



> Traditionally the police would have used stopwatches to measure the time taken for a vehicle to cover a known distance





> I still have the 3-second stopwatch I bought back in the 1970's. I was a police officer and as traffic radar was just starting to be used there had to be another way to measure speed. The city would come out and mark the street with a symbol similar to a bracket ([) where officers requested them. They would put them in pairs a certain distance apart. I would sit on a side street where I could start and stop the watch as cars crossed over the marks. We had a little chart that said how fast the car was going and it made a big difference what fraction of a second was timed.


I wonder if this was the sneaky [email protected]@rd that caught me in 1976 :lol: :lol:


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## Margot (May 19, 2009)

Thanks guys, that's very useful - Uncle Alec, you made me chuckle and blush all at the same time!


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## Uncle Alec (Feb 14, 2011)

Happy as long as I didn't make you nod in agreement.


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## Mechanical Alarm (Oct 18, 2010)

I have one that is incremented in 6 second intervals along with yardage. I believe it is an artillery range finder.




























Boy, does it hum away... I guess I can last twice as long as Uncle.


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