Original vintage 1964 Seiko advert for their newly-introduced - at the time - stopwatches, designed for the 1964 Olympic Summer Games, held that year in Asia for the first time, in Tokyo - "How Many Stop Watches are Needed to Time a Modern Olympiad?"
 
Dimensions: Approx. 10 inches wide by 13.50 inches high.
 
"More than 1,000 Seiko stop watchers of nine hundred types will be used at the Tokyo Olympics.  Seiko is honored to have been selected for this demanding task and gratified that a complete range of timers, including electronic timekeeping devices and spectator clocks, will bring split-second results to judges and audiences alike.  For Seiko is the new standard of timekeeping excellence..."
 
Seiko's stopwatches are legendary, with the split seconds one featured in this Seiko advert here serving as a great example.  1964 marked the emergence onto the world stage of a post-war Japan, most readily apparent in Tokyo hosting the Summer Olympics that same year.  Dark horse Seiko – despite having no prior experience in sports timing (much to Heuer’s chagrin, we're sure) – was named the official timekeeper, and began research and development in preparation for the games in 1961.

Even though head of Seiko's Watch Design Section Saburou Inoue noted his severe reluctance that Seiko could devise suitable timepieces in time for the 1964 Summer Games - only a few years away - legendary Seiko President Shoji Hattori would not be dissuaded.
 
Hattori may have been on to something, at least with the benefit of hindsight.  Seiko’s lack of experience also meant it lacked preconceived notions on how timekeeping should be conducted.  At the time, it was assumed to be human error when multiple stopwatches – used simultaneously – resulted in different times.
 
Under the hypothesis it may instead be the stopwatch itself resulting in different times, Seiko (under the watchful eye of Inoue) devised a machine to mechanically operate multiple stopwatches to be started and halted at the exact same time, which proved the hypothesis – different times resulted when the human element was eliminated.
 
After further research, Seiko devised solutions to the issue by upgrading certain parts of the stopwatch, resulting in a considerable improvement in accuracy – and importantly, reliable readings.  The Olympic Technical Committee head noted, upon the selection of Seiko as the official Olympic timekeeper, "We are not assigning official timekeeping to a Japanese manufacturer because the Olympics will be held in Tokyo, but because these are actual functional [timepieces], backed up by solid theory."
 
Now chosen as the official timekeeper of the games - the first to be held in Asia - and with a mere 17 months until the 1964 Summer Games, Seiko set to work.  Multiple teams at Seiko worked overtime to develop timekeepers for the games, with attention paid to the specialties within Seiko vis-à-vis each event to be timed – to include swimming, crew, cycling, equestrian, and even canoeing, among others.
 
Seiko was continuing to prepare itself to challenge Swiss dominance of the watch industry, via its massive investment in innovation and technology during the 1960’s and a strategic internal policy of encouragement and support of experimentation within.
 
For the 1964 Olympics, it paid dividends – Seiko, in full view of the world, had beat out Swiss manufactures for the honor of the official timekeeper and demonstrated what had been previously the exclusive right of Swiss watchmaking.  Seiko had provided the timekeeping instruments (watches, stopwatches – both large and handheld, and to include quartz chronometers) to keep, record, and display time at exceptionally high levels of accuracy.
 
Seiko would go on to be the official Olympic timekeeper in the 1972 Winter Games in Sapporo; 1992 Games in Barcelona; 1994 Winter Games in Lillehammer; 1998 Games in Nagano; and 2002 Games in Salt Lake City, as well as a slew of prestigious international games between 1966 and 2013.
 
And Seiko's innovative stopwatches paved the way.
 
We used the progeny of these legendary Olympic stop watches in our 1970s Seiko Stopwatch Rally Timer Set, which you can find here.  DCVW produced a mere 16 numbered examples - one resides in Sung's "Doc Z" rally car and another in his 1972 Datsun S30 “Fugu Z” (winner of the Gran Turismo Awards at SEMA - and also a car option in the Gran Turismo game), with another 14 up for grabs - and unlike other watch "limited editions," when we say it, we mean it!
 
Each of the 16 CAD-designed example features an aluminum billet mount, custom designed mounts, and two 1970s Seiko 88-5061 stopwatches - one 15 minute and one 30 minute.  We have engraved each mount with the logos for Sung's official website, Sung's Garage, Kyusha House engineering, Williams Machine Inc, and - of course - DC Vintage Watches.  Each example also features a limited edition number, ie: "2/16," and arrives in a rugged Pelican 1060 case.
 
Hypebeast noted, "That unexpected piece of hardware [the mounted rally stopwatch set] is a custom-made aluminum billet mount that housed two Seiko 88-5061 stopwatches from the 1970s — one fixed to 15 minutes and the other, 30 minutes.  This custom stopwatch rally set was the result of a joint effort between Sung Kang, John Williams Machine, and Nick Ferrell of DC Vintage Watches."