What's a 4-way timer? It's a device capable of digitally timing up to four different or related events at once. Slot cars on a race track, for example; or the first four sprinters in a race; the reaction times of four people of various states of sobriety (don't laugh - it's quite a legitimate test!); school physics experiments. And so on.

By the way, we're not suggesting those last two be combined!

It's accurate to 1/100th of a second so it is quite a useful device in its own right. And it counts up to 99.99 seconds - more than 1.5 minutes - so again it is very useful.