Omega

The story of a career marked by steep highs and a slight low point

After a promising and solid early history, Omega made high waves with the development of special pilot, sports, marine, racing and diving watches. Following a collaboration with TISSOT, Omega initiated the creation of the SSIH Group. In the post-war decades, the brand experienced an amazing flight of fancy. It became a symbol of technical precision and perfection during a period of new social beginnings. In the early 1970s, the dollar weakened and with it many Swiss watch manufacturers. The Omega manufacture survived and, as a phoenix from the ashes, regained its top position with the invention of the Co-Axial escapement by watchmaker George Daniels. For 250 years, there had been no new development in the field of watch escapement. No wonder that this design hit like a bomb. Its innovation consisted of a significant reduction in the amount of friction required compared with the conventional free lever escapement, making watches powered in this way virtually maintenance-free in the long term.

Stepping into the 3rd millennium

However, the novel escapement had to wait until 1999 before Omega's caliber 2500 embraced the innovation. It was not until 2005 that Omega developed its first in-house movement, installing the caliber 8500/8501 in the automatically driven Omega De Ville Co-Axial Chronometer. By then, Omega's clever management had found brand ambassadors in a number of glamorous Hollywood actors. Which also made this luxury brand attractive to a target group that was younger than the regular customers. At the turn of the millennium, the watch house experienced another huge boost. While the Swiss Chronograph Control Board certified around 140,000 chronometers in 1999, this figure had already risen to 510,000 by 2012, with a healthy annual increase of 3-5% to date. The integration of Omega Watch Manufacture into the Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton Group played no small part in this.

The passage of time exemplified by the Omega model series

We all know it from "Alice in Wonderland" - the White Rabbit pulls out his pocket watch every few minutes with an anxious murmur: "I'm late, I'm late!" The habit of dividing days into the smallest units would be futile without modern timepieces. A timeless time? Hard to imagine. We don't know what watch the rabbit preferred, but it might have been an Omega luxury watch because punctuality through precise timekeeping was obviously very close to the heart of the furry fellow. The main Omega model series Constellation, De Ville, Seamaster and Speedmaster are in great demand when buying watches online. All of them are distinct characters and idiosyncratic personalities, which also have their specific followers. The Omega de Ville Hour Vision in Omega's own red gold alloy of copper, palladium and gold charms with a rhodium-plated hour ring and indices of pure gold that create fascinating light reflections. The Constellation Grand Luxe was the manufacture's flagship model for many years. It is still passionately sought after by collectors and devotees today. Beautiful as a picture, a timeless classic animated by the breath of a bygone era. Under the midwifery of renowned ocean explorer Jaques Cousteau, the Omega Seamaster Ploprof surfaced from 600 meters of undersea depth in 1971. The size of its case and lockable crown make it stand out among Omega luxury watches. In its Seamaster Professional 300M version, it became the epitome of a cult watch on the wrist of Sean Connery in the movie "Golden Eye" for many younger viewers. Its characteristic appearance - the helium valve at 10 o'clock, the screw-down crown, the maritime wave design on the blue dial and the equally blue bezel - have lost none of their charm to this day.

A trip to the Moon - there and back

The Omega watch that made headlines less with a luxurious exterior than with a sensational story is undoubtedly the hand-wound "Speedmaster Professional Moonwatch" chronograph. As an unofficial employee of NASA, it participated in 4 space flights to the Moon. Together with Neil Armstrong, it stepped onto the gray sand in the valley of a lunar mountain on July 21, 1969. The chronograph had to prove its suitability in tough tests beforehand. After all, weightlessness, extraterrestrial magnetic fields, extreme vibrations and shocks, unimaginable speeds and maximum temperature fluctuations had to be survived without damage. Perfected timepieces ensure the safety of astronauts, so that the journey through extraterrestrial space does not become a one-way street. Since 2007, Omega has also been developing and producing its own manufacture movements, having previously taken over this task from ETA. Some competition with rival ROLEX was involved and, of course, the desire for technical bravura. The sophisticated result was automatic chronograph movements and new automatic calibers that caused a sensation not only with the Co-Axial escapement but also with a free-sprung balance spring.