Instruments · Stop-watch
Stopwatch, may have belonged to Ferranti employee, marked 'F Ltd 106', made by Thomas Armstrong.
- Maker / attribution
- Thomas Armstrong & Brother Ltd (maker)
- Date
- 106
- Historical period
- Classical Antiquity (500 BCE – 500 CE)
- Country of origin
- Unrecorded in source
- Object type
- Stop-watch
- Dimensions
- 25 mm x 65 mm x 67 mm,
- Holding institution
- Science Museum Group, London
- Accession / object no.
- Y1996.10.775
- Catalogue title (original)
- Armstrong stopwatch
Record summary
Held and catalogued by Science Museum Group, London (object number Y1996.10.775), this is a stop-watch by Thomas Armstrong & Brother Ltd, dated 106. The Atlas places it in the Classical Antiquity period (500 BCE – 500 CE) of its Instruments collection. Recorded dimensions: 25 mm x 65 mm x 67 mm. The record is illustrated with 1 photograph.
Assembled from the source record's structured fields. Dates and attributions are given as the source states them; where a field is missing the Atlas leaves it blank rather than estimating.
Catalogue description
The source record does not include a narrative description. The structured fields above are reproduced from it.
Historical context
Classical Antiquity (500 BCE – 500 CE)
Greek and Roman engineers refine the clepsydra; Ctesibius adds float regulation; the Antikythera mechanism models the heavens.
Greek astronomy produced the theory behind sundials and the astrolabe; the Antikythera mechanism (second or first century BCE) shows the sophistication of Hellenistic geared astronomical models.
Read the period in the timelineMore instruments from this periodEarlier: Ancient Civilizations
Atlas type guide
Timers, stopwatches, chronoscopes and time recorders
Instruments for measuring short intervals or recording when something happened form a large and practical branch of horology. Sports stopwatches and split-seconds timers, laboratory chronoscopes (such as Hipp's, which measured thousandths of a second for psychology and ballistics experiments), metronomes for music, watchmen's clocks that recorded patrol rounds, and the time recorders that clocked factory workers in and out all derive from clock and watch technology.
These objects matter historically because they show timekeeping leaving the observatory and the drawing room and entering industry, science and sport. Many were mass-produced, and their dials, scales and patents chart the rise of electrification and industrial management.
What to look for
- Scales graduated in fifths, tenths or hundredths of a second, or decimal minutes for industrial use.
- Start, stop and reset push-pieces; a second hand that can be stopped independently (split seconds).
- Recording devices: paper discs or tapes, printing mechanisms, keys or punches.
- Patent numbers and dates on the dial or case, which give a terminus post quem.
Dating clues
- Hipp chronoscopes were made from the 1840s into the twentieth century.
- Employee time recorders spread from the 1890s (Bundy, IBM, International Time Recording Co.).
- Quartz and electronic timers replaced mechanical stopwatches in sport from the 1970s.
General guidance written by the Atlas editors about this kind of object. It is not a statement about this particular piece; for that, rely on the source record above and on physical examination.
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