Without the watch industry, sporting events would be a lot less exciting; winners would be difficult, if not impossible, to determine; and the awards ceremonies at the Olympics and other sports competitions might be very different.

But then determining who crossed the finish line first is one more example of how watches have affected our lives in more ways than just the ability to tell the time.

Thanks to the efforts of watchmakers over the centuries, precision has come a very long way. “The first recorded sports competitions from the 14th century, often between guilds, used hourglasses and in the 17th century, pendulum clocks, to measure performance,” Rémi Guillemin, the head of Europe and the Americas for Christie’s watch department, wrote in an email.

By the early 19th century, a better way was being developed in Paris, where horology certainly will play a large role in the Olympics and the Paralympics this summer.

“Paris was considered the Silicon Valley of the day, the most advanced center of the technology of the time, which was watches,” said Jean-Marie Schaller, the chief executive and creative director of the Swiss watch brand Louis Moinet.

Moinet, a watchmaker and astronomer of the period, “needed a timing device to record the transit of the planets,” Mr. Schaller said. So in 1816 he invented the chronograph, basically a stopwatch, that he named the Compteur de Tierces, or Counter of Thirds, which would indicate the hour, the minute, the second and the third of a second.