[Finish camera at the 2008 Beijing summer games / photo: Hans Gruber]

I've been meaning to post a link to the fabulous interview series Fabian Neuhaus has been posting on his blog UrbanTick. To bolster his research on "cycle studies" and space-time related technologies, the scholar has been engaging in extended conversations with a range of multidisciplinary specialists. The most recent instalment in this series focuses on Hans Gubler, the head timekeeper for the 2012 games in London. Gubler is with Omega, a 150 year old Swiss watch manufacturer that operates under the umbrella of the Swatch Group.

The exchange between Neuhaus and Gubler touches on the preparation for 2012, the logistics and contingencies of sports timing and addressees interfacing with the media. Gubler describing on how timekeeping has evolved over the last seventy years:

In the 1930s timing was still done manually, meaning using stop watches. An early version photo finish camera already existed but was not approved by the sports federation in those days. Horse racing was the first sport where a photo finish device was put in place. With the arrival of the transistor in the 1940s things changed rapidly. Our company started to develop timing devices of which the key element was a high precision quartz. Electric photocells were used to start and stop timing at great precision. At the same time the photo finish technology was further developed and eventually homologated for Athletics and used for the first time at the London 1948 Summer Olympics. In the meantime conventional photo finish film technology has been taken over by computer technology. New technologies also include the introduction of transponders.

The meandering conversation considers the specific demands of various sports and gets downright philosophical with a few of the questions. Gubler delivers the following—expectedly precise—definition of time: "Time can be either described as space (amount of time) into which a quantity of work/activity is placed or the moment things are happening (from now to the end of race)."

In reading this great interview two thoughts come to mind:

• One could get a fascinating perspective of an event or area of study by engaging the numerous experts, specialists and technicians that "do the dirty work" behind the scenes. This is a point that Geoff Manaugh touches on from time to time when pondering the significance of architecture to janitors or elevator-repair personal versus ivy league educated designers or critics.
• Gubler's comments about the micro-resolution of time reminded me of The New York Times interactive piece "Fractions of a Second: An Olympic Musical", which is a remarkably lucid, dead-simple visualization/sonification produced to contextualize results from the most recent winter games in Vancouver.