Hi all,
First post here, and a proud owner of a speedy as of last month.
Really pleased with the watch, now added to my omega collection (mostly 50s and 60s seamasters)

I have a question to for all moonwatch experts and historians:

Why would the subdial hands have no lume?
Given that this watch was a tool, and expected to perform in the dark, why would omega choose to not lume the subdials?

best

sancat

 

You've got it all wrong.
It's meant to be read in the dark. Up to a point.
It's still possible to easily read the time.

Full legibility of the registers is not a requirement and may likely hinder the legibility of its primary function.
It certainly worked fine for the crew of Apollo 13.

Further, if it was a requirement from NASA's point of view, then it would not have ever been accepted for evaluation in the first place along with the other contenders.
That's assuming it's what you are referring to.

If one wants some luminosity on the registers, of a Speedy Pro, perhaps one ought to take a look at something like the Silver Snoopy.
Or look further afield to different watches.

 

Speedy Tuesday #1 sorted that out

 

I agree!

 

I can’t think of any chronos that have decent lume on them.

I’ve got a 45.5 planet ocean chrono which is pretty big and the lume area on those hands is so small it’s hard to see them at night anyway.

 

Agreed.
It's not like it's easy to read the information on the registers anyway.

 

Thanks to all for your responses.

Agree, it did work fine for Apollo 13, because the burn was a few seconds long, but a different maneuver may have required a longer timing requirement. So I think it was luck that the maneuver was short enough.

And yes NASA decided it was okay to certify it with no lume in the hands. I’m just a bit perplexed by Omega’s decision because the savings are likely small.

Would there be a historical reason to not lume the hands?
Especially given that Snoopy’s and Speedy Tuesday’s did get lumed subdials.

 

I totally forgot about the st1 as quite frankly it was never really available as a normal factory offering.
Note that whilst the registers are luminous.
It's virtually impossible to read the information off them in the dark. The Silver Snoopy is obviously not in the same league except for the fact the registers are light in colour.

Historically, there's never been any practical need to read the registers at night and when you take into the earliest history/origins of the watch it's perfectly clear why.
Regarding Apollo 13, "the burn" was a little more than a few seconds and even if it had been 4 times longer the watch still would've been more than adequate.

To put it simply, I suppose if one were involved with the space program and found one's self in the position of having to read the information provided by the registers in the pitch black, you would probably have much bigger and much, much more urgent problems to worry about.

The watch has been flight qualified for EVA's of every description for decades and used by Astronaughts and Cosmonaughts without issue otherwise it would've been updated early on in the piece to fulfill your requirements.
Then we would all be lighting up the inside of the movie theatres with the dials of our flight qualified watches.

 

You do realize that the capsules had lighting? I doubt the fact the main hands had lume made one iota of difference. The fact all the hands are stark white and highly visible in lighted conditions is much more useful, IMO.

The main reason Omega (and no manufacturer I know of) didn’t lume the sundial hands is because they likely couldn’t paint them with enough lume to make a difference and it probably would not have looked as appealing. I doubt it was for a cost savings.

 

Nice.

 

Fantastic watch. Have the 45, without the stop watch registers. But my dial has faded considerably.