Millisecond (ms)
The millisecond is one thousandth of a second, and it sits at the boundary between the timescales of human perception and the invisible world of electronics. A camera flash lasts about one millisecond. A hummingbird beats its wings roughly once every 13 milliseconds. The average human blink takes 150 to 400 milliseconds. In the digital world, the millisecond is the standard unit for measuring how quickly data travels across networks, how responsive a computer mouse feels, and how precisely audio is synchronized to video. It is the unit that separates a sluggish internet connection from a fast one, and a laggy game from a smooth one.
Definition
One millisecond equals 0.001 seconds, or 1/1,000 of a second. It equals 1,000 microseconds. One second contains exactly 1,000 milliseconds.
History
The millisecond emerged as a practical unit alongside the development of precision electrical instruments in the nineteenth century. Telegraph engineers needed to measure pulse durations too short for the second to express usefully. The advent of the cathode ray oscilloscope in the early twentieth century made millisecond measurements routine in laboratories. With the rise of radio broadcasting in the 1920s and 1930s, audio engineers adopted the millisecond to describe echo delays, reverb times, and signal latencies. Computing brought the millisecond into everyday consumer language: internet connection quality has been rated in milliseconds of latency since the early days of dial-up networking, and the unit became familiar to millions of gamers and remote workers worldwide.
Common Uses
Network latency, commonly called ping, is measured in milliseconds. A ping below 20 ms is considered excellent for online gaming; above 100 ms, games begin to feel unresponsive. Audio production uses milliseconds to set delay effects, reverb decay times, and the attack and release of compressors. Video production uses milliseconds for frame timing: a 24 fps film has frames approximately 41.7 ms apart, while a 60 fps game has frames about 16.7 ms apart. In athletics, electronic timing systems record sprint finishes to the millisecond. Medical devices such as electrocardiographs measure the intervals between heartbeat phases in milliseconds.
Did You Know? Facts About Millisecond
- The average human reaction time to a visual stimulus is about 200 to 300 milliseconds. Trained athletes and professional gamers can react in as little as 150 ms, but no human can consciously react faster than about 100 ms.
- A standard 60 Hz monitor refreshes every 16.67 milliseconds. A 144 Hz gaming monitor refreshes every 6.94 ms, which is why high refresh rates feel noticeably smoother to many players.
- The shortest musical note commonly notated, the sixty-fourth note at 120 BPM, lasts about 31 milliseconds. At that speed, notes are at the edge of what most listeners can distinguish individually.
- Wi-Fi and mobile networks introduce latency measured in milliseconds. 5G networks aim for latency below 1 ms for mission-critical applications, compared to around 30 to 50 ms for typical 4G connections.
- A bullet from a rifle travels roughly 900 meters per second, meaning it covers about 90 centimeters in a single millisecond.