Omega Speedmaster: first watch on the moon
The reprised Omega Speedmaster Calibre 321 is a throwback to the space race but it has motoring roots
The Omega Speedmaster was a regular on a rocket in the 1960s... and worn many times at Le Mans, too
The Omega Speedmaster chronograph is well known as the ‘moon watch’ on account of its multiple outings beyond the Earth’s atmosphere as part of the equipment list of numerous astronauts.
The Speedmaster’s inaugural trip into space was with astronaut Wally Schirra on the Mercury- Atlas 8 mission of October 1962, with its finest hour coming when Buzz Aldrin made it the first watch to be worn on the moon during the 1969 Apollo 11 expedition. Those events (and more) resulted in the Speedmaster being inextricably linked with space – making it easy to forget that it was designed for motorists.
One of the first modern driver’s watches, it first appeared in 1957 with a black dial, luminous hands and a chunky 39mm case.
“Our picture shows two sports car enthusiasts racing the clock,” read one of the first Speedmaster adverts. “The clock being no clock at all – but the new Omega high-precision wrist computer. When the co-driver stops the large second hand at the end of the test mile, he reads off at a glance the time as well as the speed, the latter on the tacho-producto-meter etched into the rim of the case.”
The tacho-producto-meter is better known these days as a tachymeter bezel and can be used for everything from speed and distance calculations to working out fuel consumption. So if you’re hankering after a classic driver’s chronograph but don’t fancy paying the price for a Rolex Cosmograph Daytona, a ‘Speedy’ has to be worth a look.
During the model’s existence it has been made available in many guises, but the one pictured here is the version many horophiles reckon to be the best, because it’s powered by the superlative (and lovely to look at, below left) Calibre 321 manual winding movement.
From a driver’s perspective, it was favoured by the late lamented racer Alain de Cadenet. He acquired his from a Zürich jeweller in 1968, put it on his wrist after walking out of the shop and wore it almost continually until his death 54 years later. “It was with me through all of my Le Mans races,” he once told me. “I think when you find something in life that is as good as it gets, you hang on to it.”
If it was good enough for the man who built his own car to race at La Sarthe, used a 1931 Alfa Romeo to get around London and favoured a Venetian-made bed with a horsehair mattress, surely it’s good enough for the rest of us.
Omega Speedmaster Calibre 321 Steel, £14,500. omegawatches.com
Hot on the heels of the Franck Muller Las Vegas Grand Prix watch previewed here last month, TAG Heuer launched its own version in the form of this hot pink Monaco chronograph. The DLC-treated case is made from lightweight titanium, with the skeletonised dial highlighted in pink as a “playful tribute” to Sin City. The hue continues on the other side, where a sapphire crystal case back gives a view of the Heuer O2 automatic movement. It arrives just ahead of the LVMH group settling in as F1’s new global partner.
TAG Heuer Monaco Las Vegas Edition, £9850. tagheuer.com
Last spring we brought news of the revival of the 1970 Amida Digitrend driver’s watch, a jumping-hours timepiece with a digital disc display contained in a case that enabled the time to be read at a glance without releasing a hand from the steering wheel. After the success of that limited ‘launch edition’, 2025 sees the arrival of a collection with a choice of black, steel or PVD-treated gold cases. The design has a periscope-like system that projects the numbers printed on the horizontal hours and minutes discs through a sapphire prism, so they appear on a vertical plane.
Amida Digitrend, £2300. amida-watches.com