Watchlords

Breaking News Omega Resumes Production Of The Caliber 321, The Speedmaster Movement That Went To The Moon


After a decades-long hiatus, one of the most renowned movements of all time is coming back.


This is probably the single most exciting piece of movement-related information I've seen in over 20 years of reading and writing about watches. As every watch fan knows, the movement that was used in the Speedmaster Professionals that were sourced by NASA for the Apollo missions was the caliber 321 – a remarkably tough, beautifully built classic lateral clutch chronograph movement that represents one of the most important high water marks in modern chronograph design. No less a luminary than Roger Smith recently sang the praises of the 321 in Talking Watches (and he's a guy who may be presumed to know something about movements). As every watch fan probably also knows, it's been many decades since the movement went out of production and for as long as I can remember, Omega and Speedmaster fans (myself included) have wistfully been hoping for the movement to make a comeback. We'd always assumed, of course, that there was about as much chance of that happening as the return of the passenger pigeon, but Omega has just announced that the 321 will be going back into production.

https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/omega ... NsDPN9vQ0A

koimaster wrote:Breaking News Omega Resumes Production Of The Caliber 321, The Speedmaster Movement That Went To The Moon


After a decades-long hiatus, one of the most renowned movements of all time is coming back.


This is probably the single most exciting piece of movement-related information I've seen in over 20 years of reading and writing about watches. As every watch fan knows, the movement that was used in the Speedmaster Professionals that were sourced by NASA for the Apollo missions was the caliber 321 – a remarkably tough, beautifully built classic lateral clutch chronograph movement that represents one of the most important high water marks in modern chronograph design. No less a luminary than Roger Smith recently sang the praises of the 321 in Talking Watches (and he's a guy who may be presumed to know something about movements). As every watch fan probably also knows, it's been many decades since the movement went out of production and for as long as I can remember, Omega and Speedmaster fans (myself included) have wistfully been hoping for the movement to make a comeback. We'd always assumed, of course, that there was about as much chance of that happening as the return of the passenger pigeon, but Omega has just announced that the 321 will be going back into production.

https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/omega ... NsDPN9vQ0A

Yet another Omega to add to my short list..sounds like I have some time to save up for a used version, though..

Now that's something. It's always nice to see a legend return, and when it's a hand-wound column wheel chrono, it's kind of a big deal.

However, there's an oddity in this story... A fly in the ointment, so to speak. It's this part:

Using the 2nd generation Calibre 321 as a reference, the OMEGA team compiled extensive historical research and original plans to reconstruct the movement as accurately as possible. Going even further, they also used “tomography” technology (digital scanning method) to see inside the true Speedmaster ST 105.003 timepiece that astronaut Eugene “Gene” Cernan wore on the moon during the Apollo 17 mission in 1972. Cernan was the last man to walk on the lunar surface and his Speedmaster is now housed at the OMEGA Museum in Bienne. Its Calibre 321 provided the perfect design criteria for OMEGA to follow.

What the fuck? Why would they use all the high-tech mojo? Presumably just to show off, and to squeeze Cernan's Speedmaster into the whole story. As if they had no specimen of the cal. 321 in their stash, and no stock of every part of this movement! Which, by the way, was made in large quantities...There was a number of non-Speedmaster Omegas that used it, and Speedmasters alone were made in thousands of specimens.
Even if they didn't have a stash, they could surely obtain the blueprints/moulds/plans/technical documentation/whatthefucknot of every single pinion, wheel, bridge, spring and screw from Lemania, which happens to belong to the SG, and which still makes that ebauche (and supplies it to Breguet and Vacheron Constantin).