I have owned this for years - no idea where I acquired it from!
But what is it? Some say an engineers piece. Any thoughts out there?

Many thanks, Ronnie

 

Prestons were/are (?) a chain of jewellers in the north west UK. There was one in Bolton when I was growing up. It's a 1-3 minute decimal timer isn't it? Could be used for lots of tasks, the graduations on the dial are a little unusual but I don't know much of task timers. I would imagine that there are Omega stop watch catalogues available on line with a thorough googling.

 

Hi @Ron Green and welcome to the forum! Everything there is to know about Omega stopwatches is provided in a comprehensive posting by @uwsearch, here:

https://omegaforums.net/threads/omega-and-lemania-stopwatches-quick-identification-table.53628/

 

I'd call it "industrial" rather than "engineer's". These decimal dials are commonly used where processes are involved rather than laps of a race-track because they make calculations based on time easier. This is a high speed one, the individual marks are 1/1000 of a minute, One revolution of the the main hand would take six seconds or 1/10 of a minute. Prestons also used to advertise their minute/seconds Omega stopwatches in Motor Sport magazine, of which I've got copies somewhere (TM).

 

So this is a 6 second sweep stopwatch. With the gradations marked to 0.001/min that is 60,000 bph.
Does it run that fast?

 

I believe they ran at 3 times that -- 180.000 bph. Not so much of a ticking as a low pitched (50Hz) hum