Apr 21
Want to own a piece of NASA history? Just take a trip to the jewelry store for a watch with the right guts.
Feb 22
Three one-thousandths of a second is less than 1/10th of a blink, less than 1/100th of a heartbeat. But if you’re a speedskater, 0.003 seconds can be the difference between gold and silver. So how are Olympics timekeepers able to get such ridiculous precision and accuracy? For the inside scoop, we talked to Omega’s Peter Hürzeler, head of Olympic timekeeping.
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May 25
The Dark Side of the Moon was one incredible Pink Floyd album, but you don’t have to worry that the similarly-named Omega Speedmaster watch looks like its prismatic album cover. Instead, it’s just fittingly dark and moody.
The Omega Speedster Dark Side of the Moon Watch is supposed to celebrate the lack of light thanks to its all-black design. It has a black ceramic 44.25mm case, chronograph pushers, a black zirconium oxide ceramic dial, and a scratch-resistant sapphire crystal. The indexes are tipped in white gold, and the chronograph hand is red-tipped and plated in rhodium. It’s strapped on thanks to a Cordura strap with a ceramic buckle.
It will be available soon for a yet undisclosed amount of money. It’s definitely a swanky-looking watch that would look well on many wrists. It’s got that Special-Forces kind of vibe going.
[via Uncrate]
Mar 18
This past January at SIHH, Omega announced that it had created the world’s first anti-magnetic watch movement that’s resistant to magnetic fields up to 15,000 Gauss. Previously both Rolex and IWC were the only other watch manufacturers with anti-magnetic time pieces. But Omega’s new Seamaster Aqua Terra (calibre 8508) is 15x more resistant than either one with a movement that’s mostly made up of non-ferrous metals as opposed to encasing the movement in an iron cage. More »
Jan 18
Omega Releases An Anti-Magnetic Mechanical Watch That You Can Wear In Your Supercollider
Posted in: Today's Chili
Whether you’re polishing your magnetic death ray or powering up your Stargate, the effects of magnetic fields on your watch can be quite destructive. Back in the old days when scientists wore suits and nice watches to work, they would bring their timepieces too near certain pieces of equipment, rendering the movement useless. Rolex solved this by wrapping its movements in non-ferrous metal but their watch, the Milgauss, could only handle up to 1,000 Gauss.
That was then and this is now. Omega has decided to blow Rolex out of the water with their new Seamaster Aqua Terra. This watch movement is actually made of non-ferrous material that can stand up to 1.5 tesla or 15,000 gauss, about twice the magnetic output of a subwoofer, while an MRI can hit up to 70,000 at its peak. This, incidentally is what happens when you get metal near your MRI.
The watch is a fairly standard three-handed timepiece but the new movement, the 8508, is what makes it special. The watch will ship this spring with pricing to be determined (expect something in the $10,000 range if not lower). Sound a little pricey? Tell that to yourself when you accidentally fall through a magnetic space-time vortex and your Timex stops ticking.
Jan 17
Omega’s New Anti-Magnetic Watch Doesn’t Need a Faraday Cage—It Is a Faraday Cage
Posted in: Today's Chili
The delicate inner workings of a mechanical watch handle magnetic fields—especially those generated the industrial electromagnets used in hospitals and power stations— about as well as two liters of Diet Coke handles a tube of Mentos. That is, not well. More »
Aug 07
How Humans Kept Time At the Olympics Before Machines Did All the Work [Past Perfect]
Posted in: Today's Chili
In 2009, Usain Bolt “shattered” Tyson Gay’s world record in the 100-meter dash by a whopping .11 seconds. How do we know that? Because an ultra-precise, automated timekeeping machine told us so. It didn’t used to be that way. More »
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