In the middle of the 20th century, in 1957, an auspicious year for Omega began: In one fell swoop, the Biel/Bienne-based brand launched its famed Seamaster dive watch, Railmaster field watch, and, most famously, its Speedmaster chronograph. It was called “Speedmaster" for strictly non-space-going reasons—precisely because it was meant to time speed and distance at the track. That’s right, the beloved “Speedy" is really, like most chronographs, an automotive timepiece. But its design foreshadowed bigger things to come: It was the first watch to feature a tachymeter scale on its bezel rather than on the dial, thus making the chronograph more legible. And its case, though it featured straight lugs in 1957, fairly quickly sprouted the “twisted" lugs that would make its profile so recognizable over the decades. Its hand-wound movement, meanwhile, based on a Lemania caliber, was robust and accurate.
But the Speedy’s legend was truly born when, in the mid-1960s, it beat chronographs from Rolex and Longines-Wittnauer in a series of punishing torture tests by none other than NASA. Thus qualified for manned space flight, the Speedy accompanied astronauts Buzz Aldrin, Michael Collins, and Neil Armstrong on the Apollo 11 mission, where Aldrin wore his ref. ST 105.012 on the lunar surface. Since then, the Speedy’s NASA ties have made it an object of desire for watch collectors the world over, while a constant stream of (largely incremental) changes — and many, many limited editions — have kept it top of mind in the horological sphere. Though automatic versions, complicated versions, and bio-sourced plastic versions exist, it’s the hand-wound, black-dialed, Hesalite crystal “Professional" model that most embodies the “Speedy" spirit—without it, the watch world would be a very different place.
From the article by Allen Farmelo, Paige Reddinger, Victoria Gomelsky, Oren Hartov, Blake Buettner
