Switzerland’s Biel/Bienne: Omega Museum🕰️

Biel is especially attractive to lovers of Swiss watches – it is here that the most unique brands such as Swatch, Rolex, Omega, Tissot, Movado, and Mikron are collected.

Of course, we visited the Omega Museum! We were surprised to learn that Omega factories produced not only watches and chronometers but also communication equipment and jewelry.

Definitely worth a look, the thinnest watch in the world – 1mm thick

One third of the hall on the second floor is dedicated to the space theme, where I even got to take my first step on the ‘Moon’ 👩‍🚀🌚.

The most important watch in history, whatever one may say, is the cosmic Omega Speedmaster.

You may have your opinions about this brand in its current state, but at the dawn of the space age, it was objectively the best wristwatch.

NASA engineers, selecting watches for astronauts, drew up a test program. Here are some points:

• High temperatures: 48 hours at 71°C, 30 minutes at 93°C
• Low temperatures: 4 hours at -18°C
• Near-vacuum operation: 45 minute heating and cooling cycles
• Shock Resistance: Six 11ms 40G shocks in different directions
• Vibration: three cycles of 30 minutes from 5 to 2000hz with 8.8G pulses.

The contenders included 20 chronographs, including Rolex, Breitling, Longines.
Bulova, at the peak of its form in those years and still considered an American brand, used administrative resources. They declared that American astronauts should wear American watches. Notwithstanding, based on the test results, the Omega Speedmaster was selected.

Farther this model would go on to have a breathtaking space career: a spacewalk on Ed White’s arm in 1965, a walk on the moon on Buzz Aldrin’s arm (Neil Armstrong, the first man on the Moon, did not wear a watch because he left it as a replacement for a failed timer in the Lunar Module).

But the main feat of “Speedmaster” is, of course, the Apollo 13 mission. As a result of the accident, the mechanical watch was practically the only working device on board. In order to make a course correction, the astronauts had to very accurately count 14 seconds. Omega’s reliability saved their lives.