You can thank the Olympics for your desktop printer

OLYMPIC URBAN LEGEND: The Olympics led to a watch company becoming one of the largest printer manufacturers in the world.

The development of new technologies has had a dramatic effect on the world of sports over the years. Take the development of video technology for television broadcasts of sports games. The ability to watch a play again instantly has come to affect pretty much every major U.S. sport. While some pro leagues have been slow to accept it, the use of instant replay to decide close plays is now a part of most U.S. sports and is only becoming more important as the years go by. While that is an example of a technology that was developed independent of sports being adapted to the world of sports, there are other technological advancements that were examples of athletes having a need that someone developed a technology to address.

For instance, a surgeon inventing a procedure where he removes a tendon from one part of a pitcher's body and uses it to replace a damaged one in a pitcher's elbow (the so-called "Tommy John Surgery") would have sounded like science fiction in the early days of baseball, but the procedure has saved countless careers that otherwise would have been lost. Current pitchers as varied as John Axford, A.J. Burnett, Shawn Marcum, Stephen Strasburg, Brian Wilson and C.J. Wilson all would likely not be major leaguers now if it were not for the procedure.

The connection between the sports need and the development of Tommy John Surgery is a bit obvious. Much less obvious, though, is the fact that the world of sports also led to the creation of the modern-day desktop printer.

Read on to learn how sports turned a watch company into one of the leading manufacturers of desktop printers in the world.