/ / / Omega Speedmaster Professional Moon Watch OME 661

Omega Omega Speedmaster Professional Moon Watch OME 661

Omega Speedmaster Professional – Moon Watch

Mint condition Omega Speedmaster Professional “Moon Watch” It was originally purchased from authorised Omega dealers in 2017.  The retail price is now £4000. It comes complete with box, papers and warranty certificate card and is in the large box with all accessories including illustrated moon landing booklet, Speedmaster booklet, instruction booklet, warranty cards, hang tags, nato strap, fabric strap, strap changing tools, eye loupe and spare spring bars. This is possibly one of the most famous watches ever made as it has a historical association with NASA and space travel. It has also gained legendary status which in attributed not only to it’s success in space as a professional instrument, but simply due to the fact that it is a beautiful looking watch, which is durable and practical, and can be worn on any occasion. This is whether traveling in outer space or worn with a tuxedo, or worn at a football match. The Speedmaster passed all of NASA’s stringent testing when they were selecting a watch for their space missions in the 1960’s. The other would be watches crumbled half way through testing. The other watches included some of the big name brands still around today. The Speedmaster however passed all of the tests and continued to operate as normal. This was with no special modifications as all of the testing candidates were purchased from a jewelers store in Texas. The watch had to pass all of the extreme testing for the good reason that during space travel, it would be subjected to the environments that were simulated during the tests. This being outer space, the most extreme and hostile environment known to man. Some of the conditions it required endurance was to survive massive acceleration, compression, extreme and instantaneous temperature and humidity changes, amongst more.  It is true to the original design with manual winding mechanical movement, plexi crystal, and solid steel back. Dimensions are Width including the crown is 42 mm, width excluding the crown is 44 mm, lug to lug is 48 mm and thickness is 14.5 mm

Key Characteristics

Brand: Omega
Band: Steel Bracelet
Case Material: Steel
Condition: Excellent
Movement: Hand Winding
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Omega Watches. Founded at La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland in 1848 by 23-year-old Louis Brandt who assembled key-wound precision pocket watches from parts supplied by local craftsmen. He travelled throughout Europe selling his watches from Italy to Scandinavia by way of England, his chief market. After Louis Brandt's death in 1879, his two sons Louis-Paul and Cesar, troubled by irregular deliveries of questionable quality, abandoned the unsatisfactory assembly workshop system in favour of in-house manufacturing and total production control. Due to the greater supply of manpower, communications and energy in Bienne, the enterprise moved into a small factory in January 1880, then bought the entire building in December. Two years later the company moved into a converted spinning-factory in the Gurzelen district of Bienne, where headquarters are still situated today. Their first series-produced calibres, Labrador and Gurzelen, as well as, the famous Omega calibre of 1894, would ensure the brand's marketing success. Louis-Paul and Cesar Brandt both died in 1903, leaving one of Switzerland's largest watch companies - with 240,000 watches produced annually and employing 800 people - in the hands of four young people, the oldest of whom, Paul-Emile Brandt, was not yet 24. Considered to be the great architect and builder of OMEGA, Paul-Emile's influence would be felt over the next half-century. The economic difficulties brought on by the First World War would lead him to work actively from 1925 toward the union of OMEGA and Tissot, then to their merger in 1930 within the group SSIH, Geneva. Under his leadership, then that of Joseph Reiser beginning in 1955, the SSIH Group continued to grow and multiply, absorbing or creating some fifty companies. By the seventies, SSIH had become Switzerland's number one producer of finished watches and number three in the world. Weakened by the severe monetary crisis and recession of 1975 to 1980, SSIH was bailed out by the banks in 1981. Switzerland's other watchmaking giant ASUAG, principal producer of movement blanks and owner of the Longines, Rado and Swatch brands, was saved in similar fashion one year later. After drastic financial cleansing and a restructuring of the two groups' R&D and production operations at the ETA complex in Granges, the two giants merged in 1983 to form the Holding ASUAG-SSIH. In 1985 the holding company was taken over by a group of private investors under the strategy and leadership of Nicolas Hayek. Immediately renamed SMH, Société suisse de Microélectronique et d'Horlogerie, the new group achieved rapid growth and success to become today's top watch producer in the world. Named Swatch Group in 1998, it now includes Blancpain and Breguet. Dynamic and flourishing, OMEGA remains one of its most prestigious flagship brands