As the tempo of life accelerated and speed became a virtue, a horse-racing craze swept the nation. At the track, stopwatches made it possible to post winning times in quarter-seconds! In 1855, Lexington, the country's most famous horse, ran unchallenged in a four-mile race against the clock. He set a world speed record-7 minutes, 19 3/4 seconds-that stood for nearly twenty years. Such feats inspired the American Watch Company to introduce the world's first mass-produced stopwatch.