SECOND in your life comes and goes in the blink of an eye and it may be too quick to even consider how valuable it is.

Not so for former national sprinter C. Kunalan, who is now an assistant professor at the National Institute of Education. At the fifth Asian Games in 1966, the gold medal for the 100-metre sprint eluded him by a mere 0.01 second.

His time of 10.38 seconds became Singapore's national record that remained unbeaten for 33 years. It was finally bettered in 2001 with a 10.37 seconds time, again a difference of 0.01 second. Not surprisingly, time is everything for the affable coach, who was awarded the Longines Sports Captain Award last month in recognition of his sporting achievements.

It was the need to measure short intervals of time, especially in sports, that led to the creation of mechanical time-keeping instruments such as stopwatches and wristwatch chronographs.

Apart from sports, one second can mean a lot too when it involves the human body. One method of assessing health, for example, is to measure the rate at which the heart beats. In a state of rest, the heart rate of adults should ideally be between 60 and 80 beats a minute.

This explains the doctor's chronograph watches of yesteryear that have pulse meter scales to measure patients' heart rates. You will not find many such watches these days, thanks to advances in technology, but Ball Watch is one brand that recently introduced a Trainmaster Doctor's Chronograph.

Is such precise timing really important? As professional race car driver Hafiz Koh says: "The difference in the distance between the two leading cars of a race can be as little as 1/100th of a second apart. The time between the lead racer and the one in fifth position can be 7/10th of a second. It may seem like nothing to many but for us drivers, it is a huge gap."

However, the reality is that not every one with a chronograph wristwatch uses such a function. It is a good-to have feature, but with most of such features having tiny and different types of display counters, readability is an important issue.

Even then, there is still a good demand for chronograph wristwatches because the sub-dials make the dials look complicated, and add depth and character to the timepieces.

Breitling for example is famed for its chronograph pieces. According to Mr Mike Neo, general manager of C. Melchers, the distributors for Breitling in this region, some 21 per cent of Swiss-made mechanical chronographs exported annually are of this brand, which enjoys healthy sales.

And if readability of the chronograph counters remains an issue for you, check out the new Link Calibre S Chronograph from Tag Heuer, which has easy-to-read displays. The central hands show the hours, minutes and seconds in both the time and chronograph modes. In the former mode, the two half-moon counters at the bottom indicate the date, while in the latter, the two subdials measure elapsed time up to 1/100th of a second.

Three patents have been filed for LUC Chrono One. The watch has a flyback feature, which means that with the push of a reset button, the second hand of the chronograph will "fly back" to the start to begin its next round of time measurement. RRP: $64,550		The limited edition Breitling Avenger Skyland is chronometer-certified and is water resistant to 300m. RRP: $7,822
The Chronoswiss Chronoscope features a mono-pusher and a regulator dial. RRP: $11,000		The Ball Watch Trainmaster Doctor's Chronograph simplifies the measurement of one's pulse frequency. Activate the chronograph and count for 15 pulsations before stopping the timer (the watch is graduated for 15 pulsations). The pulse per minute can be read off using the red scale on the dial. RRP: $14,000 This Tag Heuer Link Calibre S (main head picture) has easy-to-read displays. In the chronograph mode, the two half-moon counters display elapsed time up to 1/100 of a second. RRP: $4,350

Do you know?

The term "chronograph" is a misnomer today.

In Greek, chronograph means "time writer", as Chronoswiss founder Gerd-Rudiger Lang points out. It is said that a French watchmaker by the name of Rieussec made the first true chronograph in 1822 that was literally a time writer.

It encompassed a mechanism that had a needle to ink the period of time elapsed on an enamel dial, thus "writing", or recording, the time. Once done, the ink was wiped off the dial and the next measurement could then be taken.

Since there is no real writing involved in today's versions, an apt word to use is the Greek word skopeein. which means "to see" rather than graphein, meaning "to write", says Mr Lang. Is it any wonder then why Chronoswiss names its own time-measuring watch a chronoscope?