The first wristwatch on the Moon’s surface, which cemented its place in history when the Apollo 11 mission successfully landed on the Moon, was seated onto the right wrist of Buzz Aldrin around the outside of his bulky spacesuit.
However, Apollo 11 commander Neil Armstrong was first to set foot on the Moon. He left his 105.012 Speedmaster inside the lunar module as a backup, because the Lunar Module’s electronic timer had malfunctioned. But Aldrin chose to wear his, and so his Speedmaster became the first watch to be worn on the Moon.
The History of Omega Speedmaster “Moon Watch.”
The Omega Speedmaster Professional was picked by NASA for the U.S. space program in 1965. The watch had been worn from the Gemini program into the early space shuttle years.
Omega Speedmaster has always been the official watch of NASA, and no other watch has ever been flight-qualified by NASA. Astronauts later asked Omega for a digital display.
The watches they were using were battery-less and had to be wound by hand. But digital watches have either LED or LCD screens. One is sensitive to light direction, the other to temperature—and both become a problem when an astronaut goes outside on a spacewalk.
The history of how the OMEGA Speedmaster became the famous “Moon watch” began in the early 1960s when two men from NASA officials anonymously visited various jewelry stores in Houston, including the famous Corrigan’s at the time was the city’s best-known watch and jewelry retailer.
Wally Schirra had worn his Speedmaster on Mercury.
The Mercury space program was almost finished, Wally Schirra had worn his Speedmaster on Mercury flight on October 3, 1962, and NASA was planning for their Gemini and Apollo missions.
There were also plans for the NASA astronauts on these missions to move about in space outside the spaceship. And one of their key items of equipment would be a wristwatch that could endure the space’s challenging conditions.
So, whenever an astronaut stayed in the vacuum of space turned his wrist, the watch would abruptly come out of the shade and be exposed to the unfiltered rays of our sun and temperature rises of more than 100°C. And on the moon, things would be even worse.
Therefore, NASA requested two Speedmasters and two each of five other chronographs for “testing and evaluation purposes” on September 29, 1964. The men from NASA bought a series of chronographs of different brands, charged with finding the best watch available for their astronauts to wear.
Only the Omega Speedmaster passed the tests.
Finally, on March 1, 1965, the test results were finished. Only three brands’ chronographs had still been in the running. One brand’s entry had faltered on two separate occasions in the harsh relative humidity test. In the subject of the heat-resistance test, it subsequently came to rest for good.
The large second’s hand warped and was also binding against the other hands. And the crystal of the second brand’s chronograph had distorted and come away from the case during the final heat test. Furthermore, the same unfortunate occurrence took place with a second model of the same make during the decompression test.
Only the Omega Speedmaster passed. So, from that time forward, the Omega Speedmaster would be the single watch approved for all manned space flights and would be become an intricate part of the OMEGA legacy.
The “Speedmaster”
The “Speedmaster” name was coined from the model’s novel tachymeter scale bezel and made in brushed stainless steel and also by the convention set by prior Omega brands Seamaster and Railmaster.
All of the early Speedmasters adopted the same Calibre 321 movement. Which was later replaced in 1968/1969 with the introduction of the Calibre 861 movement, used in the “Moon watch.” The watches used for Apollo 11’s moon mission were the 1967 “pre-Moon” 321 versions.
Thanks for reading this short article. If you want to know more about small items brought to the moon, head over to this article named; Apollo Space Pencil.