OMEGA WRISTWATCHES: HISTORY

HISTORY

The Omega History
1825 • Birth of Louis Brandt. 1848 • Louis Brandt opened a Comptoir of établissage, a sales outlet for watches manufactures under sous-traitance. 1880 • The brothers Louis-Paul et César Brandt manufactured watches using modern procedures in Bienne. They signed their productions JURA, PATRIA, HELVETIA, CELTIC and GURZELEN. 1885 • The pallet calibre LABRADOR reached working precision of 30 seconds per day. 1889 • LOUIS BRANDT & Son became the biggest industrial company in Swiss horology, with and annual production of 100,000 watches. 1892 • Creation, in cooperation with AUDEMARS PIGUET, of the first minute repeater wristwatch in the world. 1894 • A new calibre of fob watches went into mass production and won popularity for the simplicity of its construction and the interchangeability of its parts. The banker Henri Rieckel suggested the name OMEGA. 1903 • The success of the new name led the firm to drop all other names. 1909 • For the first time, OMEGA ventured into sports chronometers, during the international balloon races, in particular the Gordon Bennett Cup. 1917 • The British Royal Airforce chose OMEGA watches for its squadrons. 1918 • The US Army followed suit in its choice of OMEGA. 1919 • OMEGA chronometers won the Neuchâtel Observatory precision prize, the first of around twenty collected by 1971. 1933 • OMEGA obtained the world record for precision. 1936 • OMEGA obtained its 2nd world record for precision. 1946 • World record for precision. 1957 • Creation of the OMEGA SPEEDMASTER wristwatch chronograph. 1965• Following extremely exacting tests, NASA chose the SPEEDMASTER PROFESSIONAL chronometer. 1967 • OMEGA obtained the millionth official certificate for precision for a chronometer. 1969 • On July 21, at 2H56 GMT, the astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the Moon. He was wearing an OMEGA SPEEDMASTER PROFESSIONAL wristwatch. 1970 •At the request of Commander Cousteau, OMEGA created the SEAMASTER PROFESSIONAL 600 (known as the PLOPROF, from “plongeur professionnel” or professional diver). This completely water resistant watch, in its “monobloc” case with bolted winding crown and won the world record for deep-sea diving. 1972 • OMEGA obtained the 2,000,000th official precision certificate. 1974 • Launch of the marine MEGAQUARTZ chronometer. 1983 • Inauguration of the OMEGA Museum, December 16. 1995 • Introduction of the first wristwatch in the world with automatic winding crown and central tourbillon. 1999 • World first with the automatic 2500 caliber inspired by an invention by the English master watch-craftsman George Daniel, OMEGA perfected the CO-AXIAL ESCAPEMENT wristwatch and started mass production. 2001 • Launch of MUSEUM collection with re-issue of PILOT’S WATCH. 2002 • COSMIC MUSEUM Collection. 2003 •Launch of RAILMASTER. Launch of MUSEUM Collection N°4.

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Story Of Omega

The Omega Story
The Omega watch story begins in 1848, when founder Louis Brandt began hand assembling key-wound precision pocket watches from parts supplied by local craftsmen in his principality La Chaux-de-Fonds, in the northwest corner of Switzerland. However, the Omega name didn't appear until 1894, after Louis Brandt had passed away and his watchmaking traditions were taken over by his sons, Louis-Paul and Cesar Brandt. Omega watches have long been associated with glamorous screen and sports stars--the Omega Seamaster is famous for being the watch of choice for James Bond--with current ambassadors including Pierce Brosnan, Nicole Kidman, tennis player Anna Kournikova, and swimmers Michael Phelps and Ian Thorpe. But Omega is more than just a fashionable watch. In 1965, the Omega Speedmaster chronograph was "flight-qualified by NASA for all manned space missions" as the only wristwatch to have withstood all of the U.S. space agency's severe tests, including passing grades for extreme shocks, vibrations, and temperatures ranging from -18 to +93 degrees Celsius. The greatest moment in the Speedmaster's history was undoubtedly 20 July 1969 at 02:56 GMT, when it recorded man's first steps on the Moon's surface as part of the Apollo 11 mission.Omega watches rocketed off to space on many subsequent missions, including visits to Skylab and the historic Apollo-Soyuz link-up of Soviet and American astronauts in 1975.	In more recent years, Omega created the world's first self-winding wristwatch with central tourbillon in 1994 and made history in 1999 with the first mass-produced watch incorporating the co-axial escapement, developed in conjunction with renowned English master watchmaker George Daniels. In simple terms, the escapement is the heart of a mechanical watch, generating the impulses that make the mechanism move. Omega's Co-Axial Escapement drastically reduces the friction among the parts that transmit energy to the other components, producing greater stability and precision and reducing service requirements. Today, Omega is known for its rigorous testing of new movements, cases, and bands. Each new Omega movement is tested on the wrist in existing Omega models, while various laboratory tests are conducted to determine temperature-resistance, shock-resistance and vibration-resistance.

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