Chun See shares with us a little doodad from the past – a digital stopwatch-cum-calculator:

Have you even seen a device like this? Chun See explains what it’s used for:

I bought this device primarily for its digital stopwatch function. The year was around 1980 or 81 and I was working as an industrial engineer in Philips Singapore. As IEs, my colleagues and I had to do a lot of time studies in the factory shopfloor. Prior to the arrival of the ST1, we used analogue stopwatches which were really very difficult to use, especially when you were timing short cycle time operations.

In time studies, we often used a technique called Flyback Timing. You first observed an operation and divided it into a series of work elements. Then you would stand next to the production operator and time each of these elements as she worked; using a special stopwatch whereby the hand would actually ‘flyback’ to zero every time you pressed the button, and commence timing the next element immediately. You then had to record the reading and start observing the next element. It required a lot of skill, especially if the work elements are very short – say a few seconds in duration. It is made worse when you had to do what is called Rating; i.e. assessed the working speed of the operation and assign a numerical Rating to it. Strictly speaking you are supposed rate every single element, but often we took the short cut and did one common rating for the entire cycle, especially when we could see that the operator’s working pace was quite steady/consistent.

How much did a doohickey like this cost? Find out in Good Morning Yesterday.