The authors have studied experimentally the brachistochrone by measuring the transit times of a 'Hot Wheels' car over several different paths connecting two points in a vertical plane. They used an electromagnetic release and a specially designed digital clock which has direct reading to 0.001 s. In each case tested, the average transit time had a standard deviation of the order of 0.001 s. Transit times for different paths differed by about 0.05-0.5 s. These data allowed them to distinguish one path from another and to separate experimentally the cyloid, which Newton found to be the extremising curve, from the other curves tested.