A 2003 high school project about the photo finish camera
February 9th, 2026 at 10:38am
Today I’m taking you in my time machine back to 2003 for a look at a project I worked on in high school: a video mini-documentary about the photo finish camera.
The project was supposed to be a speech to the class about something electronic, explaining some of the history of the thing, how it works, and how it’s useful. As the spring racing carnival was well underway at the time, I thought the photo finish camera was a timely electronic object to focus on, and got the class teacher’s approval to put together a video presentation instead of a direct speech to the class, with the teacher’s stipulation that I must appear on camera during the video.
I have actually shared the mini-documentary itself previously, way back in 2007, but now with the benefit of much more hindsight I have the opportunity to not only share the video and some stories of its production, but reflect on how I might have done it differently if I could do it today, and also take a moment or two to correct a few factual errors in the video, which also have their own interesting backstories.
I’m sure just about everyone reading this blog today hasn’t seen the mini-documentary before, so I hope you enjoy it. Those of you who have seen it previously: I hope you enjoy the expanded information and reflection on it.
Samuel
Entry Filed under: Adventures In Betting,Samuel News
