SPEEDMASTER
It had mastered the skies even before it made those numerous trips into space that would lead to the landing on the moon. In fact, the forerunners of the Speedmaster were the various models designed for flight. For example, the chronographs (one was a wristwatch) presented after the Gordon Bennet Cup and advertised as “Pour aviateur”; or the 1917 supply to the Royal Air Force, or the onboard models and wristwatches that, in 1933, equipped the twentyfour seaplanes used by the Italian Italo Balbo for the Roma-New York-Roma transatlantic flight; the subsequent supply to the Italian Air Force and later the equipping of Amelia Earhart, the first woman to make a sole flight across the Atlantic. It would be possible to continue the list, but it is necessary to make a halt in 1938, when the Maison of Bienne presented two watches, with a rotating bezel for calculating times, specifically designed for pilots. The last great leap forward, the fundamental hurdle, takes us to 1957: in this year the Speedmaster, the most famous chronograph of all times was born. Equipped with the calibre 321 movement, directly derived from the 27 CHRO C12, it was a manual wind watch, with steel case and bezel (first in engraved steel and later black with screen printed numerals), it was available in 4 versions: with the tachometric, telemetric, pulsometric or decimal scale (the latter for industrial use). The rounded-barrel case had a steel bracelet, massive lugs, pump pushers and, thanks to
a lead O ring on the back, it was water resistant to 60 metres. At this point the Omega range was complete, with a series of elegant models and chronometers and a range of highly technological sports watches, but the consecration of their worth would come some years later, when the American Congress, astounded by the space adventures of the Soviet Union gave rise to the Apollo programme, the evolution of the Mercury project which, in 1962, saw the outer-space baptism of the Speedmaster; however, it was on the wrist of Walter Shirra, who had bought it personally. In the same year, the NASA decided to begin the operation “watches for astronauts” and, incognito Houston purchased ten different brands in order to subject them to stringent testing. In 1964 there were still six manufacturers in the race, including Hamilton, Longines, Omega and Rolex and on March 1st of the following year, when all the tests were completed, the American space agency announced: Omega has passed all the tests with full marks and has been chosen for the space missions. The first flight in this role was the voyage of the Gemini III capsule in March and the first “space walk” for the watch was that of Edward White, which took place in June of the same year. However the high point would occur four years later: on June 11th 1969 at 2 hours 56 minutes and 20 seconds Greenwich Mean Time, Neil 96
Armstrong set foot on the moon’s surface. However, he was not wearing a watch, he had left it on the module because the onboard counter had stopped, so contrary to popular belief, the first Speedmaster to land on the moon was on the wrist of Buzz Aldrin, the second man to descend onto the surface of our celestial satellite. Since then, in spite of a second and a third test of the