176.007 and Cal.1040 Family Review

dialstatic

Just found a Croton watch for sale that claims to have a Lemania 1340 movement. Thought it might make an addition to the excellent research that started this thread, if indeed it pans out.

robocaspar

Going through this thread makes me miss my 176.007 blue dial.

incabloc

unfortunately the right dial in the wrong case....🙁

Northernman

Nice write-up!👍

I do not want to split hairs, but there are a few places the roles of Omega and Lemania within the SSIH is not precise.

Omega did not develop the 1040, nor any other chronograph movements between early 1930s and modern times. That was all done by Lemania.
Within SSIH, Lemania was assigned the role of designing and manufacturing movements with complications for the group members. Omega did not have these capabilities in-house. Only in the 1980s was the production tools for the cal 861, and most likely some persons, moved to Bienne from l'Orient. Complete watches was in general assembled entirely in l'Orient by Lemania.

As Omega was the big name within the SSIH group, special features was kept unique for them. You will also find this with the caliber 980 Memomatic "setting alarms to the minute" (vs Lemania 2980) and the cal 381 full moonphase (vs Lemania 3300) and of course the 24h indicator for the 1040/1041.

The choice of dropping the bumper based automatic movement created in 1947 (not 1946) was not made by Lemania themselves. The final vote to scrap it was actually made by the chairman of Omega according to the books.


The 1045 is by the way a re-branded Lemania 5100 without any alterations. Due to the course of history, when SSIH had to sell of Lemania in order to stay afloat, the 5100 was also made available to other brands in the "full version" with the 24h indicator. True to tradition, Lemania had also here created a "lesser" version"; the 5012.
The loss of Lemania within the SSIH also resulted in Omega using standard ETA movements (1130) in their later designs.