The forerunner of Omega, La Generale Watch Co., was founded at La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland in 1848 by Louis Brandt, who assembled key-wound precision pocket watches from parts supplied by local craftsmen. He sold his watches from Italy to Scandinavia by way of England, his chief market. The Omega Seamaster may be most quickly recognized as the “James Bond watch,” but the watch’s history dates back to 1948 when it debuted in celebration of Omega’s 100th anniversary. The model was an immediate hit and became the brand’s best seller. Today it remains the oldest model in Omega’s current collection. We look back at the long history of this fan-favorite Omega watch. The partnership between James Bond and Omega watches goes back 25 years, to Pierce Brosnan's debut as 007 in 1995's GoldenEye. Oscar-winning costume designer Lindy Hemming said she chose to adorn Bond's wrist with an Omega because that struck her as the most authentic choice. One small step for a man, a giant leap for mankind and an extraordinary destiny for the watch that accompanied Man’s first steps on the Moon, thereby becoming the greatest icon in watchmaking history: the Omega Speedmaster “Moonwatch”.

Introduced to the public by Omega in 1957, the Speedmaster was designed for mainly sporting purposes, such as in motor racing. However, its fate took a completely different turn in the early 1960s. Astronauts going to space, some of whom wore a Speedmaster for private use, wanted to be officially equipped with a reliable, accurate and resistant watch. For this reason, NASA undertook a series of rigorous tests in extreme conditions in 1964 to select the best chronograph to accompany them on their space missions. The Omega Speedmaster won these tests and was officially certified (“Flight Qualified for All Manned Space Missions”) by NASA on March 1, 1965 for the Gemini project. It was in July 1969 that it truly made history, serving the astronauts of the Apollo 11 mission (Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins) for man’s first steps on the Moon. The Constellation family has been around for 66 years and is currently one of Omega’s oldest collections. What started out as a chronometer for men in 1952 has undergone countless aesthetic transformations, from the pie-pan dials of the 1950s to the ultra-thin quartz watches of the 1970s leading to the consolidation of the collection in 1982 with the Constellation Manhattan and its hallmark claws. Today many Constellation models are equipped with Master Chronometer movements respecting the original vocation of this family to combine luxury and precision. Let’s take a look at how the Constellation got its star power and its claws. In 1957, Omega released the very first Railmaster, the reference CK2914. We all think of dive watches and hearty chronographs as tool watches, but the Railmaster was a tool watch of a different sort: It was a watch for scientists that could stand up to the magnetic fields encountered in the laboratory. As you likely know, magnetism can wreak havoc on a mechanical watch, distorting the balance spring and impacting its ability to maintain a stable frequency, and thus keep accurate time. The CK2914 used a soft iron inner case as a Faraday Cage and a thicker dial to shield the movement from outside magnetic fields of strengths up to 1,000 Gauss.