LOTS 152, 156 & 176
OMEGA SPEEDMASTER PROFESSIONAL ‘321’ “WHEN THE SPEEDMASTER MET THE MOON” The Speedmaster can correctly and in all modesty be named the most famous chronograph in the world! Its marvellous story starts in 1965, when, after exhaustive tests, the Speedmaster Chronograph was selected by NASA to equip their astronauts for all manned space missions. The Speedmaster’s engine was the calibre 321, a column wheel calibre designed by Lemania’s Albert Piquet.
HOW AND WHY NASA CHOSE THE SPEEDMASTER:
In 1962, NASA purchased for evaluation about ten Chronographs models at the Huston retailer Corrigan’s, without the knowledge of the brands concerned. In 1964, only six brands remained in the race among them: Hamilton, Longines, Rolex and Omega. In September, NASA invited these brands to each provide a dozen watches
for a last series of eleven extremely severe tests.
In broad terms, these tests were as follows: the watches, with the chronograph on, were exposed for
two days to temperatures
ranging from 71C to as high as 93C. A low temperature test involved the watches being frozen for hours at minus 18C. Pressure and temperature tests involved heating to temperatures as high as 93C in a virtual vacuum, another involved heating to a stifling 70C and then cooling to a chilly -18C and this 15 times in a row! They were soaked in corrosive pure oxygen for two days, given shocks up to 40 G in six different directions, submitted to high and low pressures and an atmosphere of 95% humidity. 130db
of noise, vibrated with average accelerations of 8.8G. Such merciless treatment was not long in causing casualties among Omega’s competitor’s, which were all successively eliminated. The Speedmaster was the only watch to have kept ticking throughout the testing. As a result, the Omega Speedmaster was declared on the 1st of March 1965 “FLIGHT QUALIFIED BY NASA FOR ALL MANNED SPACE MISSIONS” and given to Virgil “Gus” Grissom and John Young, the crew of Gemini 3. The 23rd of March marked the Speedmaster’s inauguration flight
“the official” chronograph aboard Gemini 3.
For Omega, the mission had above all been one of revelation, not least because of the photographs showing their Speedmaster being worn in space by an astronaut. This explains the appearance in the summer of 1965 of the appellation “Professional” on the dial. Later in 1967, Omega was again chosen to equip the Apollo programme that started in 1967. Thus, on the 21st of July 1969, at 2:56 GMT, the magic moment came when Neil Armstrong put his foot on the moon. This was also the most important moment for the Speedmaster: from then on, it became the Moon Watch, the one and only watch ever worn on the moon...
Furthermore, this example’s dial has turned a wonderful brown in colour, sometimes called the “chocolate” dial. This dial has become so sought after by collectors, even Omega brought out a special edition model in homage to it.
condi t ion re ports pages 75-82 in f o@wa t c h e s of k n i g h t s br i d g e . com
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