Sports and hobbies are usually made more competitive and enjoyable by electrical equipment. A golf cart, for example, allows for a quicker and more pleasurable game when players don’t have to lug their bag around the entire course. Electrical equipment such as golf carts require durable, long-term operation and scheduled maintenance. Maintaining accurate run-time records for carts and similar equipment helps prevent lost revenue for the owners or, even worse, a wrongly billed and unhappy renter. Time totalizers can be found hard at work in golf carts to monitor battery run time hours like a vehicle’s odometer.

A time totalizer is a device that records and displays a total elapsed time, but performs no output function. There are three types of time totalizers that include mechanical, electromechanical and electronic with either mechanical (digit wheels) or electrical (LED/LCD digital) displays. Elapsed time totalizers will totalize time ranging from fractions of a second up to a time of several minutes. They may also totalize in units of hours, hours and tenths, hours and hundredths, or various combinations of hours, minutes, and seconds. Some models are provided with a reset button or knob so that totals can be reset when necessary and may have the capability to be locked to prevent unauthorized resetting of records. Mechanical versions of time totalizers may be directly connected to a rotating component of a machine or other piece of equipment to record run time, these are generally called revolution hour meters, and the recorded time is based on the revolutions of the rotating component at a given speed.

Time totalizers are typically used on heavy equipment to record run hours for maintenance or rental/paid run time purposes. Electromechanical time totalizers are normally operated by an external voltage source and only record time when the voltage is applied. These are typically used in equipment to record run time, down time, product life cycles, etc., for maintenance or warranty purposes. The same can be said of electronic models, certain versions will have LED or backlit LCD displays for easier reading in low light situations.

Time totalizers, particularly the electromechanical and electronic models, are generally panel mounted for unobstructed viewing, and may be environmentally sealed to protect the internal components from damage or contamination from extreme conditions.