Electronic timing is older than most people imagine and was used for the first time more than a hundred years ago at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics. Initially, the well-known company Ericsson was tasked with developing the technology, but it was the Swedish inventor Ragnar Carlstedt who eventually created the final product.

At the same time, Carlstedt introduced another invention: the finish line camera. The 1, 500-meter Olympic final was extremely close with Arnold Jackson from Great Britain winning by only 0.1 seconds. But it was impossible to decide on the silver medal since the two Americans Abel Kiviat and Norman Taber finished side by side. For the first time in history, the outcome of an Olympic event had to be settled based on a photo finish when Kiviat was judged to be “slightly ahead”.

The significance of these two inventions led a major newspaper to write: “Electronic timing at the Olympic Games. Simultaneous (同时发生的) timing and photography of contestants. A brilliant idea!”

The next step in timekeeping was the photo-finish camera with a time stamp imprinted on each picture, which was introduced at the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles. The 1948 Olympics saw the introduction of another invention with the continuous slit camera (狭缝摄影机), where a film behind a narrow slit rolls (滚动) with the same speed as the runners. Four years later the clocks were connected to the slit camera giving a solution of 1/100 s. But it was not until 1972 that official times were recorded to the 100th of a second.

The next big step in the eighties was to make the camera digital to speed up the feedback (反馈). But the idea behind the slit camera was kept and is still the basis of all timing systems for athletics used today. The only difference is that now there is a very narrow sensor array ( 阵列传感器) instead of the moving film.

After a century technology has reached the point where the whole timing system can be stored in a smartphone. So in a way, the circle was closed when SprintTimer, a sports timer and photo finish app, was developed in the same place and precisely a hundred years after Ragnar Carlstedt.

How Well Do Films Predict Our teach Future?

Everyone judged the possibility of a movie through a different perspective. If you're a doctor, you may think: “That character would not have survived that fall.” If you're a scientist: “that's not how black holes work.” And if you're me, it's more like: “What a stupid concept of future personal technology!”

It makes me crazy when ski-fi moviemakers dream up stuff with no basis in science. Human teleporters? Sorry, Star Trek. A bed that detects and cures cancer in seconds? No, Elysium.

【小题1】 Star Trek's self-opening doors are now a standard feature of grocery store entranced, and the driver less cars from Total Recall (and many other moves) are already on American roads.

Lately it's clear that Hollywood's production designers have been putting serious thought into the teach we'll someday carry. 【小题2】 He talks to her through a single ear bud, through which he gets a surprising amount done: processing e-mail, browsing news stories, sending messages. When an image is essential to the communication, he flips open his phone, where the picture appears.

This solution makes a lot of sense—more than, for example, Goggle Glass, a now discontinued head band that placed a mini screen above your eyebrow. Social mistakes, not technical ones, hastened its devise: Glass's camera frightened others and made you look like a disgusting being. 【小题3】

In a recent movie called What Happened to Monday, humans live in a dystopian future where, to control overpopulation, it's illegal to have more than one child. The characters wear wrist bands containing tiny projectors. They shine perfectly crisp, color images onto their palms, which the characters tap as though they are touch screens. 【小题4】 We won't see this in the real world, though. Even if a pick projector, battery and process or could be shrunk and squeezed into a thin band, challenge remain. How would the projector attain sharp focus on an irregular, moving palm? How would it project enough light on sunny days? How would it work on very light or very dark skin?

Well, I suppose I should let that part go. They're just moves, right? They're not a depiction of the future—at least not yet.

Can you imagine printing food? Some scientists are trying to revolutionize the dining experience by doing this. They hope that having a 3D printer in the kitchen will become as commonplace as the microwave. Scientists say that they are easy to use: you simply have to select a recipe and put the raw food "inks" into the printer. You can also change the instructions to make the food exactly how you want it. This means that it would be very quick and easy to create tasty and nutritious meals.

They say that if people used 3D printers to create meals there would be less need for traditional growing, transporting and packaging processes as food production would be a lot easier. For example, alternative ingredients (原料) such as proteins from insects could be changed into tasty products. And as is known, those traditional activities are not beneficial to our surroundings.

This technology could also help people who suffer from dysphagia (a swallowing disorder). The patients could program the printer and softer versions would be made so that they would not have trouble swallowing them.

What's more, cooking and eating together with family and friends has long been a traditional and enjoyable activity. It is hard to imagine a world where the pastime of cooking is dead and meals can be created at the touch of a button.