Pens and Wireless Adopt a Sporting Attitude

Sports, and the related big business of hosting a major sporting event, seems a natural for mobile, stylus-based computing systems. In the past month, two high-profile national events have turned to this technology to help in the scoring and coordination.

While the action was clearly centered on the courts at the ’94 U.S. Open, the activity taking place along side the courts had a distinctive spin. For the first time ever, the chair umpires kept score and time using IBM’s ThinkPad 730T pen-based tablet computers.

Using a special application, umpires at all 16 match courts marked the computer screen following each point, much the same as they used to with the old paper-based system. Information from the tablet was then transmitted to on-court electronic score boards, and to an IBM-based information system.

Umpires were also able to print a one-page statistical summary in the referee’s office following a match. This summary was then distributed to the media, and other tournament officials.

Before adopting the system for use with the U.S. Open, the U.S. Tennis Association first tested it at the USTA Clay Court Classic in Pinehurst, North Carolina.

Tennis was not the only sport to go high-tech this past month. The NEC “World Series of Golf” adopted Solectek’s AIRLAN wireless Ethernet local area network to connect a range of mobile and desktop NEC computers.

The system enabled people throughout the course, including the press room, clubhouse, and headquarters, to access tournament statistics.

IBM Sports
Carol Glassmeyer
(203) 655-2114

Solectek
Bruce Sanguinetti
(619) 450-1220

NEC Technologies
(508) 264-8754