Many watchmaking companies have had many "firsts" over the years. It's difficult to think of one more impressive than that achieved by Omega at 02:56 GMT on July 20th 1969: the original Omega Speedmaster became the first watch worn on the moon.

The Speedmaster was not designed and built especially for NASA. It had been generally on sale since 1957. In the early 1960s NASA purchased samples of a number of watches available at the time for testing - one of these was the Speedmaster (later known as the Speedmaster Professional). The watches that NASA considered needed to provide both standard timekeeping functions and the ability to time intervals.

The selected watch would, of course, need to operate accurately and reliably in the cold vacuum of space. The different makes of watch were therefore subjected to a series of tests including vacuum, gravity and temperature. Only the Omega Speedmaster Professional passed.

The Speedmaster thus became the official wristwatch of the space program - despite political pressure to use an American made brand. It was first worn by the gemini astronauts and then later on the Apollo program.

After becoming the first watch to be worn on the moon in 1970 the Speedmaster was known informally as the Moon Watch.

Although the Speedmaster is most famous for being the first watch worn on the moon, the most important contribution it made to the space program was probably during the ill fated 1970 Apollo 13 mission.

When the power failed on the mission, the on-board computers and timing devices were useless. The only way the crew could make vital timings - such as engine bursts - was via their wristwatches. Had the Speedmaster failed or been inaccurate then the outcome of that mission might have been very different.

As a recognition of the contribution of the Speedmaster to the safety of the mission and the astronauts, it received the NASA "Snoopy Award". ("Snoopy" was the nickname given to the Apollo 10 Lunar Module, officially "LM-4".)

 

 

 

 

 

 

The name Accutron today refers to a modern range of watches you can buy from Bulova. However in the minds of horologists and watch collectors it's usually associated with an innovative watch that Bulova created back in the 1960s.

The Accutron is described as the world's first completely electronic watch - and it appeared before the era of mass-produced quartz watches. The mechanism it used was an innovative resonating tuning fork.

Previously, watches had been regulated by a rotating balance wheel. Unfortunately the accuracy of such a mechanism was limited. The resonating tuning fork, with a higher frequency, allowed for potentially greater accuracy - however many doubted that the idea could be made to work.

The tuning fork concept had first been patented by Louis Breguet (grandson of Abraham Louis Breguet) back in 1866. This patent applied to the use of a tuning fork in clocks - no-one had been able to miniaturise the mechanism to work successfully in a watch.

Bulova began work on the Accutron in 1952. Engineer Max Hetzel built the prototype by hand, with a tuning fork five centimetres in length. The design was finalised in 1959 by Hetzel and William Bennett.

The Accutron was finally released to the public late in 1960, the first model being the 214. The production watch incorporated an electrically powered tuning fork oscillating at 360 Hz - this compared with a frequency of around 2 Hz for most of the quality mechanical watches of the day. It also gave the Accutron its distinctive hum.

This breakthrough allowed an accuracy of an amazing 2 seconds per day. The Accutron was so successful that it chosen by some of the original NASA astronauts. Bulova Accutron movements were also adopted by NASA for some mission critical activites.

Some two million Accutrons were made by Bulova between 1960 an 1970. Many of these still work perfectly today with little more than a new power cell.

Bulova ceased to produce tuning fork watches in 1977. Although the Accutron name continues today as a brand, the modern Accutron range for sale today is not connected with the tuning fork watch of the 1960s.

 

 

 

The famous Graves Complication - one of the most complicated watches ever made - was completed in 1933. In 1999 it was sold at auction for $11 million, making it the world's most expensive watch at the time.

The Graves Complication arose out of an informal competition between Henry Graves Jr and James Ward Packard of Ohio. These two - very rich - men each commissioned a series of ever more impressive watches from the Patek Philippe watch company during the 1920s.

The Graves Complication was the end result of this horological "arms race". It was commissioned in 1930 and completed in 1933. It was a grand complication pocket watch - one which featured more than one complication. In horological terms a "complication" is any extra feature beyond basic timekeeping functions.

This watch was at the time one of the most complicated ever built (it has since been outdone by the Calibre 89 "ultimate" watch). It included numerous complications including split-second chronograph, moon phases and even a chart of the night sky over Graves' home in New York!

When Henry Graves died the Graves Complication went to the Time Museum in Illinois. When the museum closed in 1999 the watch was sold at auction and fetched just over $11 million. It was purchased by an anonymous bidder and has since disappeared from view, probably into a private vault somewhere.

Which is a loss to the world of horology. Hopefully it'll re-emerge one day and return to public display.

 

 

 

 

The H4 (also known as "H-4") is one of the most famous watches from one of the most famous names in the history of horology. John Harrison was an English clock designer born in 1683 who finally solved the problem of determining longitude at sea.

Back in Harrison's day the problem of determining longitude was one of the great unsolved scientific puzzles. Determining latitude was relatively easy, but longitude defied calculation. Not knowing their accurate position caused many ships to be wrecked with great loss of life.

In 1714 the British Parliament passed the "Longitude Act" which set up the Longitude Board to award a hefty prize to the first person to solve the problem. This prize was eventually won by John Harrison in 1773 for the H4, the first genuine shipboard chronometer (although due to political wrangling Harrison had by then progressed to the H5).

The H4 took Harrison a massive 13 years to construct - but this was only the end of a lifetime's work. His genius was clear from the very beginning. Unfortunately many astronomers such as Nevil Maskelyne were convinced that a mechanical solution would not work and that only astronomy could solve the longitude problem. The fact that Harrison was from a working class family and had little formal education probably didn't help his prospects.

To be fair to Maskelyne et al, the clocks and watches before Harrison were simply incapable of maintaining anywhere near accurate time at sea.

Solving the longitude problem through horology meant designing a timepiece that could work accurately at sea. When you consider the rolling waves, changes in temperature and generally adverse conditions the dificulty of this task becomes apparent.

The H1 (Harrison Number One) was itself a great achievement. It was a smaller version of one of Harrison's wooden clocks and used counterbalanced springs to ovecome the problem of rolling at sea.

The H1 was completed in 1735 and proved successful at sea. However the Board of Longitude demanded a full a transatlantic voyage. They gave Harrison a grant of 500 pounds with which he began work on the H2.

The H2 was completed in 1741, however Britain was then at war with Spain and a sea voyage would have risked the new technology falling into enemy hands. In addition Harrison was unhappy with some aspects of the design. He received another grant of 500 pounds to continue his work.

The H3 was completed in 1759 however it failed to reach the levels of accuracy demanded by the Board. Despite this it must be one of the most successful "failures" ever! The H3 incorporated both an advanced anti-friction bearing and a bimetallic strip to compensate for temperature variations, two brilliant innovations. However Harrison felt that he had one as far as was possible with his basic design.

The H1 to H3 had all been portable clocks. The H4 was completely different - a pocket watch, albeit it one rather too large for the average pocket (about five inches in diameter and weighing several pounds).

The H4 was completed in 1761 and sent on a transatlantic trial in the care of Harrison's son William. The H4 left Britain on 18 November 1761 and arrived in Jamaica on 19 January 1762. During the entire voyage it lost just 5.1 seconds. Despite this the Board of Longitude refused to award Harrison the prize and demanded a second trial.

The second trial was accompanied by Nevil Maskelyne himself. The H4 exceeded the level of accuracy demanded by the Board - but they still refused to pay the full reward. Instead they added all sorts of extra conditions such as Harrison surrendering all the H series timepieces, detailing their design and making additional copies of the H4.

Harrison reluctantly complied with these conditions, yet the Board still tried to avoid paying him the full reward.

In the end Harrison appealed directly to King George III. In 1772 Harrison's son William was summoned to an audience with the King. When he explained the situation the King is reported to have said: "By God, Harrison, I will see you righted!".

The King himself took the latest version of the H4 - now called the H5 - and tested it. When it proved to be as accurate as claimed Harrison petitioned Parliament with the King's backing and was finally awarded his prize and the recognition he rightly deserved.

To describe any single watch as "the ultimate" might sound like hyperbole. However there is one watch that has gained that moniker in horological circles. If any watch deserves to be called the ultimate watch it must be the:

The Patek Philippe Calibre 89 was, as the name suggests, created in 1989. It was produced to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Geneva watchmaker Patek Philippe.

The aim of the Calibre 89 appears to have been to cram as much in as possible whilst retaining the levels of quality for which Patek Philippe is renowned. As a result, this amazing double-sided watch has twenty-four hands and over thirty different functions. These include perpetual calendar, leap year and Easter calculation, sunrise and sunset indicators, a star chart and even a thermometer!

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the ultimate watch consists of 1728 parts and reportedly took nine years to develop.

Only four of these watches were sold, one made in platinum and one each in yellow, rose and white gold. Initially they were sold for four million Swiss francs each. In 2004 the white gold Calibre 89 was sold at auction for around six and a half million Swiss francs - five million US dollars.

For all its glorious complexity, the Calibre 89 is not actually very practical. Although designated a "pocket watch" it is too large for such a purpose, weighing in at almost three pounds! In addition, the myriad of hands and dials make it difficult to actually read.