鈥淲E LIVE in a tenth-of-a-second world,鈥� Thomas Edison鈥檚 electrical engineer Arthur Kennelly mused. That unit is roughly human reaction time and, as measurement technologies improved, this bodily lag from stimulus to response became a vexing matter of observational interference. ably shows it was brought to a head by astronomers recording the transit of Venus in 1874: precisely timing anything through an eyepiece was bedevilled by human error.
Yet while this history of the unit thoroughly covers scholarly dialectic in science journals, the underlying experiments receive little attention. We learn that gunner reaction times were studied by time-motion acolytes in the trenches of the first world war, but only get hints of results. The unit鈥檚 cultural role in sports measurement flickers by in a mention. Still, it is a thoughtful look at the all-too-human perceptual complications facing objective observation.
University of Chicago Press