Japanese inventor believes he can make marathon races in Europe run
more smoothly. Kazuo Takahashi of Kanagawa-ken, has filed a European patent
application (EP 432 801) which colourfully describes the chaos which can
ensue when tens of thousands of runners compete in a marathon: no one is
quite sure who has clocked in and when.
Takahashi suggests bar coding all the competitors, like goods in a supermarket.
Each competitor is then checked out at the finishing line.
The race organisers enter details of each runner into a computer which
gives every competitor an identifying number and prints out a corresponding
bar code label. On race day competitors wear the labels on their shirt or
wrist.
At the end of the race the runners pass a judge holding a stopwatch.
The stopwatches are all connected to the computer which registers runners’
times at each gate. The judges then wipe a bar code reader over every runner’s
label, in order of arrival. The computer collates all the information from
each gate to produce a final list of competitors and times.
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