Curations: Omega’s historic passion for precision set the stage for its Master Chronometer certification
- The Swiss luxury watchmaker made its name in the 19th century, revolutionising the industry with a calibre that set a new standard for manufacturing
- Omega established its own testing process in 2015 to account for modern watch features such as resistance to magnetic fields made by hi-tech devices
Omega’s long history of groundbreaking precision watchmaking started with a 23-year-old entrepreneur who worked from home. In 1848 in the Swiss village of La Chaux-de-Fonds, a young watchmaker named Louis Brandt opened a workshop in his family villa to assemble key-wound pocket watches.
While Brandt quickly became known across Europe for creating high-quality precision timepieces, he aimed to take watchmaking to another level. He had a vision to devise a watch mechanism that would provide the most accurate time measurements possible.
Brandt’s passion for precision was passed down to his sons Louis-Paul and César, who took over the business after their father’s death in 1879. Together, they produced several new innovations in watchmaking, leading up to the invention of the 19-ligne Omega calibre in 1894.
This movement made of interchangeable parts revolutionised the industry, as it set a new standard for the mass production of watches. The Brandt brothers named the calibre after Omega, the last letter in the Greek alphabet, to signify its status as the crowning achievement in watchmaking at the time.
The success of the Omega calibre led the Brandts to adopt the name for their company, and a new watchmaking brand was born.
During the 20th century, the Swiss luxury watchmaker built upon its reputation for precision. In addition to manufacturing watches and winning observatory trials for accuracy, Omega got involved in sports timing, and in 1932 was selected as the official timekeeper of the Olympic Games in Los Angeles. It provided timing for all the Olympic events that year using one watchmaker and 30 chronographs.
Since then, Omega has literally stood the test of time, serving as the official timekeeper for nearly all the Olympic Games that have followed. Over the decades, the brand introduced revolutionary timing technologies that have improved sports timekeeping from one-tenth of a second in 1932 to one-thousandth of a second, as seen at athletic events today.
As Omega approached the next century, the quest for greater precision continued to prevail. In 1999, it unveiled the Co-Axial escapement, the first new practical watch escapement to be developed in 250 years. Invented by George Daniels – a British horologist known for building watches entirely by hand – the escapement reduces friction between its surfaces, allowing for improved reliability.
The escapement has since been featured in several innovative Omega calibres, including the anti-magnetic Co-Axial 8508, which was introduced in 2013 in the Seamaster Aqua Terra watch. Designed in response to the growing use of wireless devices, the movement is resistant to magnetic fields of 15,000 gauss, compared to previous anti-magnetic watches that could only resist levels of around 1,000 gauss.