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Who Invented The Virginia Count?


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Virginia count was created by Virginia of course. Having been assured there really was a Santa Claus Virginia wanted an accurate count of her Christmas loot. She did not want two of the same thing and a joint present from two parents did not count as two gifts!

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I think but cannot be for sure that a virginia count stage was first introduced in the mid-80's at the Nationals. Read a post by D.R. Middlebrooks who claims to have invented it and get it introduced. Just curious if anyone here knew any more or less history about it.

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I don't recall who invented it, but I know why. Back in the old days, we did not have electronic timers. We used.....stopwatches. Trying to figure out just when a shooter was done was always fraught with hassle. Was that the last shot? Was that? Was that?

So, we invented two things you newer guys hardly ever see: stop plates and Virginia Count. The stop plate was simple; it was the last thing you shot. When the plate went "tink" the timer stopped the watch. If you still had other steel standing, or misses on targets, tough noogies. You ate the penalties. If you tried to "clean up" after the stop plate, you'd still get the penalties plus procedurals.

Virigina count did the same thing. The timer simply counted to the last shot and hit the stopwatch when you fired it. So, on El Prez, the timer would click on the start signal, and off on the second shot of the last target. It was up to the shooter to keep count and get his hits.

With sound-sensitive timers, we can let the shooter do what he wants. When they came out we basically went to freestyle field courses and didn't look back.

My next installment: the invention of dirt. :P

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I've always wondered how it worked before modern timers.

Can you explain a little more about how you kept time? Did you click the timer on every shot, or did you just try to figure out the entire last time by starting the watch and then stopping it on the "last shot". Seems to me it must have been a lot harder before modern timers, when were they invented anyways?

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CenTX brought an early, early timer to a match once-- it was a par-time timer-- you set the time you wanted using dip-switches, and it beeped once at the beginning of the time and once at the end.

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Ah stopwatches My personal favorite.

If you are fast shooter your time is usually dependant on the one RO with slow reflexes and reaction times, who usually draws in minutes, to react and get your time. I used to love matches with stopwatches.

Hey Patrick, I know what a stop plate is but didn't invent dirt. :o Have been accused of shooting IPSC with a muzzleloader. :ph34r:

Scary I remember those timers with the dip switches.

You know, D R is from "Virginia" right ????? Did he shoot in the late 70's - very early 80's? Maybe he and Al Gore invented Virginia Count

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the first par timer I saw had ot be 1980-81. The proud new owner (Ron, then Pres of the gun club, and now a righthand seat in a cargo 747) had rigged the timer, loudspeaker and battery to a handtruck. The whole thing weighed 50 pounds or so. We could run half the shooters on a line for Standards.

I don't recall the first time I saw an electronic shot timer. but it had to be not later than the middle 1980s. Around the spring of '82 the clubs records started showing a timing difference: instead of times beign written as tenths, they became hundredths. that could happen only with shot timers, not stopwatches.

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I'm not an "old timer" by any means but I remember one telling me that Mr. Comstock's wife's name was Virginia.

Don't know if there is any truth to it or not but that is what I was told. I can't ask the source until I pass over to the other side......

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  • 7 months later...
Read a post by D.R. Middlebrooks who claims to have invented it and get it introduced. 

[insert sarcastic FistFire reference here]

Guilty as charged... :)

The reason I did it was we were running standard excercises and most of the shooters at the National Level (we ran 2 Nat's and a World IPSC Match in Virginia) could not make the FAST Par Time limits. :(

So, to keep the excercise exciting and challenging enough for the Top Guys, I thought a drill with a limited number of rounds would be better than having some guys shoot the standards and not get off all their shots. B)

It [Virginia Count] has been misused and abused though, as it was never intended for scenario stages. :(

D.R. Middlebrooks

www.TacticalShooting.com

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