Apparatus for timing sporting events

Claim 1

An apparatus for timing sporting events including a motion picture camera installed at a fixed position and having a lens, the axis of which is directed onto a line to be crossed by competitors so as to record the events occuring on said line, said camera comprising a bidimensional photosensitive charge coupled device including a multiplicity of sensors arranged in rows and columns, the rows being in a direction parallel to said line and the columns in the direction of the running of the course and a pulse generator for controlling the transfer of charges from sensor to sensor along the columns, the frequency of the pulses being adjusted to effect substantial correspondence between the speed of charge transfer and the speed of the image moving over the device, a shift register being arranged at the end of the columns so as to receive in parallel information from said columns and to transmit it in response to a clock signal in series to an output circuit so as to reconstitute row by row the image received by the device, the pulses furnished by the generator controlling the charge transfers being employed as a time base at a time scale corresponding to the events being recorded, said scale being blended into the image resulting from said events.

Claim 2

An apparatus for timing sporting events including a motion picture camera installed at a fixed position and having a lens, the axis of which is directed onto a line to be crossed by competitors so as to record the events occuring on said line, said camera comprising a bidimensional photosensitive charge coupled device including a multiplicity of sensors arranged in rows and columns, the rows being in a direction parallel to said line and the columns in the direction of the running of the course and a pulse generator for controlling the transfer of charges from sensor to sensor along the columns, the frequency of the pulses being adjusted to effect substantial correspondence between the speed of charge transfer and the speed of the image moving over the device, a shift register being arranged at the end of the columns so as to receive in parallel information from said columns and to transmit it in response to a clock signal in series to an output circuit so as to reconstitute row by row the image received by the device, the pulses furnished by the generator controlling the charge transfers being employed as a time base at a time scale corresponding to the events being recorded, said scale being blended into the image resulting from said events.

Claim 4

An apparatus for timing sporting events including a motion picture camera installed at a fixed position and having a lens, the axis of which is directed onto a line to be crossed by competitors so as to record the events occuring on said line, said camera comprising a bidimensional photosensitive charge coupled device including a multiplicity of sensors arranged in rows and columns, the rows being in a direction parallel to said line and the columns in the direction of the running of the course and a pulse generator for controlling the transfer of charges from sensor to sensor along the columns, the frequency of the pulses being adjusted to effect substantial correspondence between the speed of charge transfer and the speed of the image moving over the device, a shift register being arranged at the end of the columns so as to receive in parallel information from said columns and to transmit it in response to a clock signal in series to an output circuit so as to reconstitute row by row the image received by the device, the frequency of the pulse generator being manually adjustable by an operator so as to adapt the speed of charge transfer to the speed of the course image.

Claim 5

An apparatus for timing sporting events including a motion picture camera installed at a fixed position and having a lens, the axis of which is directed onto a line to be crossed by competitors so as to record the events occuring on said line, said camera comprising a bidimensional photosensitive charge coupled device including a multiplicity of sensors arranged in rows and columns, the rows being in a direction parallel to said line and the columns in the direction of the running of the course and a pulse generator for controlling the transfer of charges from sensor to sensor along the columns, the frequency of the pulses being adjusted to effect substantial correspondence between the speed of charge transfer and the speed of the image moving over the device, a shift register being arranged at the end of the columns so as to receive in parallel information from said columns and to transmit it in response to a clock signal in series to an output circuit so as to reconstitute row by row the image received by the device, the frequency of the pulse generator being manually adjustable by an operator so as to adapt the speed of charge transfer to the speed of the course image.