The Secret to Getting Ahead

The secret to getting ahead is getting started.

Mark Twain

The Smithsonian Magazine has an article about “The Timekeeping Tech that Keeps the Olympics Fair .” Apparently, starting a race with a bang from a single gunshot gives the nearest athlete to the gun an unfair advantage of a fraction of a second because they’re closer to the sound of the gunshot. “This problem was first addressed by installing speakers into starting blocks that would play the sound of the gunshot at the same time for every racer, but there was still a slight advantage–a startle response–that comes with proximity to the real gunshot. Without any actual gun fire, the new system [an electronic starting pistol] eliminates any possible advantage at the starting block.”

About the author

Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer. He was lauded as the “greatest humorist the United States has produced”, and William Faulkner called him “the father of American literature”. His novels include The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), the latter of which has often been called the “Great American Novel”.