Baseball having inherent speed-measuring capabilities

• Main Authors: LIN, JR.; HONG T, HUANG; DING-LI, LU; TENG C, YANG; MICHAEL, DIAL; DWAIN
• Format: Patent
• Language: English
• Published: 04.10.1988
• Edition: 4
• Subjects: AMUSEMENTS; APPARATUS FOR PHYSICAL TRAINING, GYMNASTICS, SWIMMING,CLIMBING, OR FENCING; BALL GAMES; GAMES; HUMAN NECESSITIES; INDICATING PRESENCE, ABSENCE, OR DIRECTION, OF MOVEMENT; MEASURING; MEASURING LINEAR OR ANGULAR SPEED, ACCELERATION, DECELERATION,OR SHOCK; PHYSICS; SPORTS; TESTING; TRAINING EQUIPMENT

A baseball with a self-contained speed-measuring module positioned within a hollowed-out portion of the solid core of the ball, with the upper portion of the module being a display unit that indicates the speed at which the baseball was thrown over a fixed distance, the read-out of the display unit being visible from the outside to allow for the reading thereof. The module is enclosed in a single, unitary housing, and includes a computer chip. The chip includes speed-determining circuitry, and is made up of a programmable counter that counts down a plurality of times for every time interval of the flight of the thrown ball, the value representative of each time interval being loaded into the programmable counter by a programmable logic array, whose inputs are coupled to the outputs of a most-significant digit display counter of an LCD unit, the instantaneous value of which is representative of the time interval determined by the countdown rate of the programmable counter. Each time interval represents a portion of a graph of speed vs. time, with ten points in each time interval being approximated by a first-order linear approximation, with each of the ten points representing one countdown of the programmable counter. A piezoelectric stop switch is provided for stopping the counter and latching the data to indicate the speed of the thrown ball.