89ST - an interesting family of Olympic models

[akable]

At the start of the 1960’s Seiko began development of a series of high end stopwatches intended for use at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. The series included models capable of recording 1/5th, 1/10th and 1/100th of a second increments. The 1/15th and 1/10th sec models have split second functionality.



These models were instrumental in Seiko becoming Official Timer for the Tokyo games and they went on to be the last series of mechanical stopwatches to be used at any Olympics.



Each has a clean and highly functional design that was created by legendary Seiko designer Taro Tanaka.





The movements are all nicely finished and are clearly very well made with a lot of attention paid to the design for reliability and accuracy.






Here is a video of the 1/100th sec model that operates at 360,000 bph. The noise the movement makes is very distinctive.



These models were made from 1963 to 1977 so are relatively common but the 1/100th sec version is less commonly seen.

If you want to see a lot more info about these models I have put together some information here: 89ST Series Stopwatches - Olympic Sports Timers

[leffemonster]

Fascinating read Anthony, thank you. If we call a 36,000bph watch a ‘Hi-beat’ then what the hell do you call a 360,000bph watch?

[bbilford83]

Great write-up Anthony, and thank you for the excellent video of the 360,000 bph in action - it's the clearest one I've seen.