http://quillandpad.com/2015/07/30/e...e-designed-by-rene-bannwart-founder-of-corum/

 

Not the name I was expecting

 

Thanks Tony, that was an interesting read. I had always thought of the movement designers as the rock stars of the horological world.

 

I also found it interesting, but luminous material was first applied in 1940 to the dials of watches? Ludicrous at best!

Tom

 

Reading between the lines, I suspect that the reference is to applying luminous material to dress watches to be sold to the public. Now it may well be that Omega wasn't the first to do so, or that there are examples to found from the '30s (or earlier), but if you were to eliminate military watches, luminous dots, etc. on civilian watches were, I would imagine, uncommon at least.

 

Ah, no. Find yourself any period advertisement for the "Ingersoll Radiolite", sold before World War I.

After WWI, there were any number of "trench watches" sold with radium paint.

1940 is by no means the first.

Tom

 

I think that you're still missing the point. The ones that you mention have luminous numerals, while my reading of the article is that it is a reference to dots on dress models. Neither the Ingersoll nor (obviously) trench models fall into that category. If you can provide an earlier example of something like the Seamasters, that would be useful.

 

Maybe we should narrow it down. Luminous dots, dress models, on Swiss luxury watches. Just about every American watch company had been putting radium on watches since WWI. I have some really cool Illinois dress watches with radium from the '20s.

 

I'm willing to believe that the article is referring to the first time that Omega had applied luminous material....

Tom

 

Based on the assumption that they couldn't possibly be so uniformed, I still suspect that it was an unclear reference to luminous dots associated with applied markers. Were there any such Omega models produced prior to the Seamaster?