<P> With two different timing methods came the inevitable desire to compare times . Track and Field News initiated adding . 24 to hand times as a conversion factor . Many electronic hand stopwatches display times to the hundredth . Frequently those readings are recorded , but are not accepted as valid ( leading to confused results ) . Some low level meets have even hand timed runners and have switched places according to the time displayed on the stopwatch . All of this is , of course , wrong . Hand times are not accurate enough to be accepted for record purposes for short races . Human reaction time is not perfectly identical between different human beings . Hand times involve human beings reacting , pushing the stopwatch button when they see the smoke or hear the sound of the Starting pistol , then reacting ( possibly anticipating ) the runner crossing the finish line . The proper procedure for converting hand times would be to round any hundredths up to the next higher even tenth of a second and then add the . 24 to get a time for comparison purposes only . But many meets displayed the converted marks accurate to the hundredth making the results look like they were taken with fully automatic timing . In these cases , some meets have displayed a 4 or a 0 in the hundredths column for all races . When detected , reports of these times are followed by a `` c '' or ' to indicate converted times . </P>
<P> With two different timing methods came the inevitable desire to compare times . Track and Field News initiated adding . 24 to hand times as a conversion factor . Many electronic hand stopwatches display times to the hundredth . Frequently those readings are recorded , but are not accepted as valid ( leading to confused results ) . Some low level meets have even hand timed runners and have switched places according to the time displayed on the stopwatch . All of this is , of course , wrong . Hand times are not accurate enough to be accepted for record purposes for short races . Human reaction time is not perfectly identical between different human beings . Hand times involve human beings reacting , pushing the stopwatch button when they see the smoke or hear the sound of the Starting pistol , then reacting ( possibly anticipating ) the runner crossing the finish line . The proper procedure for converting hand times would be to round any hundredths up to the next higher even tenth of a second and then add the . 24 to get a time for comparison purposes only . But many meets displayed the converted marks accurate to the hundredth making the results look like they were taken with fully automatic timing . In these cases , some meets have displayed a 4 or a 0 in the hundredths column for all races . When detected , reports of these times are followed by a `` c '' or ' to indicate converted times . </P>
what does c mean in track and field
what does c mean in track and field
converted times
converted times