Megaquartz intro

The Marine Chronometer watch of 1974 was arguably Omega's finest achievement in terms of
precision wrist time keeping, but was at the same time part of a closing chapter in the art of
mechanical chronometry. While a significant artifact of the Quartz Revolution, it was also the first
wristwatch to gain from the Neuchatel Observatory certification as a (proper) marine
chronometer. Indeed, at that time the observatory seemed to have tightened up the performance
requirements for chronometers in line with the new technology of Quartz, and required levels of
precision rather better than the few tenths of a second variation per day expected from doing
things the old way. Ironically though, while near perfection of timekeeping had at last been
achieved with the wristwatch, the practical worth of such self-contained precision had by then in
fact become rather moot.

Since early in the Twentieth Century radio time signals had largely removed the need for the
classical marine chronometer to be needed as a primary navigational instrument and later
technologies in the form of LORAN, Decca, Omega (no connection) and satellite based global
positioning systems such as TRANSIT and NAVSTAR, would provide self-contained and highly
portable navigational equipment capable of unimagined levels of precision.

So the real days of finding one's position by sextant and clockwork were over. And the
mechanical marine chronometer; that precious and revered instrument of detent escapement,
helical compensated balance and fusee, on which the lives of countless sailors and aviators once
depended were a fast fading memory when Omega's little electronic masterpiece came into being.

For a short while the Second World War generated a new need for chronometers of all types, and
during that desperate period the last significant advances in mechanical chronometry were to be
made by Hamilton in the United States. But once hostilities had ceased the reliable resumption of
radio navigation signals rendered even the superb Hamilton models 21 and 22 obsolete and
unwanted.

Wristwatch 'chronometers' would of course continue to be sold. But these somewhat ironic items
were actually to do with capturing the imagination and cash of those with large disposable
incomes, and had little to do with advancing the art of precision chronometry. The reality was that
the arrival of the quartz epoch had made professional chronometer trials even more irrelevant. No
longer would the military need carefully graded mechanical timekeepers, no longer would
specialist manufactures vie with each other in the race to perfection, as it had become quite
apparent that almost any reasonable quartz watch would be perfectly good enough to navigate by.
The Swiss suspended their chronometer competitions in 1968 (to save the embarrassment of
cheap quartz watches 'demolishing' their expensive clockwork), the trials were never revived and
Kew stopped theirs in 1974. But the 'designer' watch industry still required quantities of
'chronometer' certificates to help sell its costly offerings. So to meet this somewhat different need
machines were devised to rate and print out 'chronometer' certificates automatically and by the
million. Levels of scrutineering were revised downwards to reflect the modest capabilities of the
mass-produced mechanical movements submitted for trial. And thus the modern 'chronometer'
became a rather spurious concept far more to do with marketing than precision time keeping.

In addition (as if almost to add insult to injury), serious chronometry marine or otherwise had in
fact long since severed its links with the watchmaking business and had made a complete
departure from things mechanical. It is now to be found within the 'physics packages' of costly
scientific instruments.

Quite where this leaves Omega's 'Marine Chronometer' of 1974 remains to be seen. Despite the
decline of the quartz watch generally as an object of desire and being out of production for over a
quarter of a century, it remains an interesting horological item and is worth some study perhaps.
It's movement caliber was known by Omega during development as the 'Elephant', and it was
quite an elephant of technological achievement back then. And who knows? perhaps some were
even used to navigate by.

In early 2002 I became sufficiently interested (and affluent) to acquire an example of my own.
And having done some research on the beast a small web presence seemed to be appropriate,
particularly as there was such scant information available on the net (with of course the exception
of Mr. Schone's interesting and authoritative web page).