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Fortis in Space Outline...

 

Fortis History/Timeline

 

Founded in 1912 (or nearly 95 years ago)

 

In 1926 Unveiled the first series production self-winding automatic wristwatch.

 

In 1943 unveiled their first water resistant chronographs

 

in 1962 unveiled the Spacematic

 

designed to exceed the demands of extreme temperature and pressure faced by space travelers.

 

Officially joined the ranks of space traveling watches in the early 1990's

 

Timeline of watches in space.

 

perhaps here it is an appropriate time to do a quick review of the topic of space traveling watches.

 

Early missions:

 

12 April 1961: Yuri Gagarin becomes the first man in space and the first to orbit, while wearing a Soviet State-Mandated Sturmanskije watch. Sources differ about which specific model of Sturmanskije... While the Russian-made watches were reliable and accurate enough, Russian cosmonauts reportedly later coveted the Omega watches (in particular the Speedmasters) worn by their American rivals.

 

5 May 1961 and 21 July 1961, in Successive Mercury missions, Americans Alan Shepard (Mercury Redstone 3 "Freedom 7") and Virgil I. (Gus) Grissom Mercury Redstone 4 "Liberty Bell 7", flew sub-orbital missions lasting 15 minutes in length aboard and 4 . To this point in time no records have been located which detail what timepieces, if any, either Shepard or Grissom wore.

 

20 February 1961, As reported in a recent article in IW magazine, it was recently discovered that John Glenn wore a Heuer pocket/lanyard stopwatch into space on his Mercury Atlas 6 "Freedom 7" mission. This marks the first time that a Swiss timepiece, albeit not a Swiss wristwatch, was worn on a space mission.

 

24May1962 Scott Carpenter aboard Mercury-Atlas 7 "Aurora 7" wears the first Swiss Chronograph wristwatch into space. The watch a 24-hour complication of the venerable Navitimer chronograph sports a very cosmic model name of Cosmonaut.

 

3 October 1962 Wally Schirra aboard Mercury-Atlas 8 "Sigma 7" wears the first Omega Speedmaster, a CK2998 model to make it into space.

 

15 May 1963 Gordon Cooper aboard Mercury-Atlas 9 "Faith 7" wears not both a soon to be ubiquitous Omega Speedmaster as well as a Bulova Accutron Astronaut Tuning Fork watch. The Accutron becomes the first electronic movement wristwatch to be worn in space.

 

NASA standardizes on Omega Speedmaster's:

 

At some point during the waning days of the Mercury missions NASA decides to standardize on an Astronaut timepiece.

 

A NASA employee (or employees) descend upon a Houston Jewelry store and purchases some candidate watches off the shelf.

 

Three final candidates to emerge as finalistsfor the "Official" NASA chronograph:

 

A Rolex powered by a Valjoux 72 movement.

 

A Longines also powered by a Valjoux 72 movement.

 

A Omega Speedmaster powered by a Lemania c.2310 base (Omega c.321) movement.

 

The final results of the tests were that only the Omega remained intact and operational after all of NASA's tests.

 

The reasons for Rolex's dismissal was it stopped on twice during the Relative Humidity tests and subsequently failed during the High Temperature test when it's sweep hand warped and was binding against other hands on the dial.

 

The reasons for the Longines dismissal was it's crystal warped and disengaged during the High Temperature Test. The same issue occurred on a second example during the Decompression test.

 

However, it should be pointed out that the Speedmaster didn't exactly pass all tests with flying colors:

 

Speedmaster gained 21 minutes during the Decompression tests and lost 15 minutes during an Acceleration test. The dial luminescence was destroyed during testing. However, in spite of these issues, the Speedmaster survived the NASA torture testing intact and it's performance was deemed acceptable and it was accepted as standard issue.

 

NASA considered modifing the Speedmasters with a rotatable 12/24 hour bezel, and luminious markers and hands on the subdials, but due to time constraints these intentions were never done.

 

A couple of other points for Collectors of Space watches...

 

It is not known, and likely never will be known if there was something special about the design, materials and methods utilized in the manufacture of the Speedmaster that kept it's hands and crystal intact allowing it to pass the tests, while it's Longines and Rolex competition failed.

 

It should be pointed out that while the Lemania c.2310 based Speedmaster was chosen by NASA for Astronaut use, the failures suffered by the Rolex and Longines were not movement related.

 

It's not known if a Valjoux movement inside a Omega Speedmaster case would have passed NASA's torture tests.

 

It has been recorded that NASA issued all astronauts two Speedmasters while they were with the Astronaut corps. Only one of these Speedmasters was required equipment on missions. Some astronauts did wear other watches (Astronaut Scott as mentioned above and Jack Swigert on Apollo 13 for certain).

 

Thus there are plenty of avenues for collectors of timepieces with a Space association.

 

While NASA standardized on Speedmasters, it's known that the Soviet Cosmonauts also saw the utility of a wrist chronograph for use during their missions.

 

A frequently used model was a Seconda 17 jeweled 45-minute 2-register chronograph.

 

Additionally, while NASA mandated the use of a Speedmaster on flights, we know that chronographs from other firms and other countries made it onto Apollo missions.

 

It was recently sleuthed out that Astronaut William R. Pogue flew a Seiko 6139-600x Yellow Dial automatic Chronograph during the Skylab 4 mission. Up until recently it had been reported that a Sinn 142 (Space One) model which flew aboard the SpaceLab mission in 1986 was supposedly the first automatic chronograph worn in space, but apparently it was beat to this distinction by a solid decade!