Apparatus for timing sporting events

DETAILED DESCRIPTION To overcome the difficulties presented by both of the two systems described hereinabove, the apparatus provided in accordance with the present invention, is characterized by the fact that the camera comprises a bidimensional photo-sensitive charge coupled device including a multiplicity of sensors arranged in rows and columns, the rows being in a direction parallel to the image of the line of passage of the course, and the columns being in the direction of the running of the course and a pulse generator is provided 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.