It Was An Accident; A Closer Look At The Omega Speedmaster
It might be the most-told story in watchmaking. ‘The moon watch,’ flight-qualified and issued by NASA to astronauts. It famously visited the lunar surface with Buzz Aldrin. It may have saved lives on Apollo 13. And the whole thing was basically a coincidence. An accident.
To explain this and more, we’ll have to take a closer look at one of the most famous watches ever created, the Omega Speedmaster.
In the early 1950’s, an overwhelming majority of watches were small and thin. In the 21st century these are called ‘dress watches,’ but back then a 32 or 34mm two-or-three handed timepiece was just what people wore every day. It was a more formal society in those times; if you look at period photos of events like baseball games or picnics in parks, the overwhelming majority of men in those photos are wearing suits and ties. Women wore dresses.
So it made sense that wearing a watch that looked good with a suit or a dress was a popular thing to do. But the world was changing.
The world was becoming more mechanized and computerized. Cars, trucks, and buses led to airplanes and rockets. Humans were climbing Everest, diving miles below the ocean in submersibles, and making their way to the moon. This was reflected in the major watch companies’ efforts to design products that could be used by these explorers; these were people for whom ‘time was of the essence.’
In 1953, Rolex debuted a beefed-up and watertight version of their Turn-O-Graph; they called it the ‘Submariner.’ Only two years later, they were approached by Pan-Am Airways to collaborate on what would end up being called the Rolex GMT Master.
Not that Omega was late to the game by any means; they had introduced the first serially-produced ‘waterproof watch’ (called the Marine) back in the ’30s. But the designers and executives at Omega surely saw what Rolex and other firms were doing with ‘professional watches,’ and didn’t want to be left behind.
Of course, the world didn’t revolve around Rolex. IWC and Patek both had their own versions of sports watches; shielded timepieces that protected the watchworks from dust and more importantly, magnetism. These new radios and computers had components with strong magnetic fields, the enemy of any traditional watch.
IWC called theirs the Ingenieur, and while it only took up a fraction of their sales it was a bastion of new technology at the time. Patek began dropping its new Cal. 27–400AM movement into watches; the 3417 could be purchased in stainless steel and featured a large ‘Amagnetic’ text on the front of the dial. One could even get a 3410 Calatrava with this new movement inside; basically a velvet glove encasing an iron fist.
Small drips that came before the flood.
Omega answered back in 1957, dropping three new products that make up the cornerstone of their offerings even in the present day. The ‘big three’ were called the Seamaster, the Railmaster, and the Speedmaster. Of course the Seamaster was the diver, the Railmaster was the anti-magnetic watch, and the Speedmaster was made for timing things. All are now considered design classics and collectors’ items.
But what was interesting about these watches (as well as their compatriots the Submariner and Ingenieur) was that they were never intended to be mass-produced items. Normal people weren’t the target of Omega’s marketing for these pieces. They were simply made as tools for people who needed to use them. But society had changed in the meantime.
When John F. Kennedy was elected president, he decided against wearing a hat while speaking to the crowd at his inauguration ceremonies. Hats fell out of fashion for men shortly afterwards. The sixties began a period that continues today where casual dress is seen as ‘cooler’ than formal dress, and nonconformity began to be more ‘chic’ than fitting in. All of these factors contributed to the idea that sports watches were cool, and dress watches were not.
Did you want to be an explorer, or one of the fussy ‘old guard’?
Did you want to wear jeans and a T-shirt, like James Dean or Elvis? Or did you want to dress like a conservative politician? For the youth of America and of the world, there was only one ‘cool’ choice. And this meant things that were meant to be casual and tough became subversive and in fashion. But let’s get back to the Speedmaster.
The watch was unique in that it had a tachymeter scale on the outer bezel, instead of in smaller type on the dial. This made the Speedy easier to read, and easier to actually use as a chronograph to convert elapsed time into units of speed per hour. The Speedmaster was one of and possibly the first ever watch to have this feature. As one might imagine, it was promptly copied by both Rolex (for their Daytona) and Heuer (for the Carrera.) So the Speedy was for racing, not aviation or space travel…what gives?
Enter NASA, and John F. Kennedy (again!)
As mentioned above, this new generation of watches made for demanding measurements in the field proved popular with soldiers and pilots, who of course were some of the first astronauts. Kennedy had thrown down the gauntlet of the ‘space race,’ stating publicly in ’61 that the U.S. should land a man on the moon (and bring him back) before the end of the decade.
Jet pilots soon wanted to become astronauts, and their watches came along for the ride. Omegas and Rolexes had already flown on early experimental jet and rocket missions, simply because they were the personal property of airmen. Chuck Yeager famously donned Rolexes, and astronaut Walter Schirra wore a Speedmaster on an early Mercury mission.
Having a personal timing device and stopwatch for astronauts piqued NASA’s interest, but the American space administration didn’t just send a guy out with an AmEx to pick up a few watches. In 1964, the famous space agency inquired to a large group of watch companies about possibly acquiring some watches to use for ‘torture tests.’ (As influencers, they were basically looking for free merch.) Only a small amount of watch firms even responded to the offer; Rolex, Omega, Longines, and Hamilton.
For those who care, here’s the list of timekeeping obstacles NASA came up with:
- High temperature test: 48 hours at a temp. of 160°F (71°C) followed by 30 minutes at 200°F (93°C).
- Low temperature test : 4 hours at a temp. of 0°F (-18°C).
- Temperature-Pressure test: 15 cycles of heating to 160°F (71°C) for 45 minutes, followed by cooling to 0°F (-18°C) for 45 minutes at 10−6 atm.
- Relative humidity test: 240 hours at temperatures between 68°F and 160°F (20°C and 71°C) in a relative humidity of at least 95%.
- Oxygen atmosphere test: 48 hours in an atmosphere of 100% oxygen at a pressure of 0.35 atm.
- Shock test: Six shocks of 40 G, each 11 milliseconds in duration, in six different directions.
- Acceleration test: From 1 G to 7.25 G within 333 seconds, along an axis parallel to the longitudinal spacecraft axis.
- Decompression test: 90 min. in a vacuum of 10–6 atm at a temperature of 160°F (71°C) and 30 minutes at 200°F (93°C).
- High pressure test: 1.6 atm for a minimum period of one hour.
- Vibration test: Three cycles of 30 minutes of vibration varying from 5 to 2000 Hz.
- Acoustic noise test: 130 DB over a frequency range of 40 to 10,000 Hz, duration 30 minutes.
The tests lasted almost five months. Only one watch survived it all.
What’s wild is that again, all of this was an accident. The Omega designers didn’t think about rockets or moonwalks at all when designing or building the Speedmaster! Those things didn’t exist yet. All they wanted to do was build an extremely durable and reliable timepiece, that one could use to time things like a stopwatch and still looked good. It was accidentally spaceworthy, the toughest one of the bunch.
So the ‘Speedy’ became the watch issued to U.S. astronauts. But that’s only the beginning of the story. Neil Armstrong was the first man to walk on the moon, but he wasn’t wearing a watch! The NASA Lunar Module they traveled to the surface of the moon in had a malfunctioning electric timer, so Neil had to time stuff old-school-style with his Speedy. So when he went out of the Lunar Lander to do the moonwalk, he left his watch on the ‘dash’ of the LM. Buzz Aldrin had his strapped on, however, forever making the Speedmaster the Moon Watch when he stepped outside.
Seven years later, these backup timing devices may have saved lives. After a routine launch, the Apollo 13 service module was floating in space on their third day of the mission in April 1970 when something went wrong. One of the crew members turned on the fans to stir the external oxygen tanks, and an explosion occurred. Astronauts Swigert and Lovell famously stated over the radio “Houston, we’ve had a problem.’’
The astronauts lost oxygen, and had to transfer into a much smaller craft as a sort of ‘lifeboat.’ They then had to ‘burn’ their engines to direct the whole craft back to re-entry and to Earth. Following the instructions from NASA in Houston, the astronauts once again used their issued Omega chronograph watches to time their fuel burns. The crew had to put up with intense crowding and cold conditions, but landed back safe on Earth in the end.
Unlike say the Rolex Submariner, the Speedmaster was never radically redesigned by Omega. There are for sure many, many small redesigns and movement changes; but this isn’t the article for that. All you really need to know is that older ones are more valuable than newer ones, and that Omega will release a new limited-edition version at least a couple times a year for the rest of eternity. There’s a couple different sizes, and a million variations including different color schemes. But the original is the ‘FOIS,’ the First Omega In Space, and the 42mm Speedy Pro is the Moon Watch.
The world got more casual, and just as how sports shoes became casual shoes, and sportswear became casual wear…sports watches became everyday watches. Average watch sizes grew larger (and are now finally shrinking again!) but now you know a bit about one of the most important sports watches, the Omega Speedmaster.
The watch that went to the moon on accident.
(If you want to read about the X-33, the digital, 21st century space watch made by Omega for NASA, the ESA, and the SpaceX teams…check out our page. We wrote about that watch as well. Otherwise, thanks for spending some time with Curated Classics today!)
