Omega has recently unveiled a fantastic new watch that will drastically improve timekeeping for almost everyone. The Aqua Terra 15,000 Gauss is a revolutionary way to address the major flaw in mechanical watches. Through history the one Achilles heel to a mechanical watch was magnetism. Even a small amount of magnetism (measured in units as a Gauss) can drastically affect or even stop a mechanical watch. The parts of a watch movement can become magnetised and begin to move erratically due to their magnetic attractions to one another.

Demonstrating the Watch’s Capabilities

Aimed squarely at the Rolex Milgauss,The Omega 15000 gauss has come up with a new way of preventing magnetism from affecting a time piece. Most typical watches today are rated to about 80 gauss. The most popular method used to make a watch resistant is to surround a movement with a non ferrous metallic “cage” usually iron.  IWC’s Big Pilot and the Rolex Milgauss are two prominent models to use this technique. The Milgauss which is rated to 1,000 gauss,and is a fantastic watch, does not approach the level of magnetic resistance found in the Omega.

Up until now the Iron cage solution has worked, but has always been an imperfect one. The large and bulky cases cannot block magnetism above about 1,000 gauss. Also, they tend to block the view of the movement much to the disappointment  fo watch enthusiasts . Omega went in a completely different direction to avoid all of these disadvantages.

This is not Omega’s first trip in the development of an anti-magnetic watch, but it is their best executed. They were working on magnetically protected models as far back as 1957, with the Omega Railmaster. The Railmaster, was a benchmark itself being the first watch to achieve a resistance of 900 gauss. What they have done with the Aqua Terra 15000 gauss was create a movement based on their Co-Axail caliber using non ferrous materials thus, making the movement itself resistant to magnetic interference, they call it the caliber 8508. Omega already had the basis for such an invention in place: Omega’s in-house movements already include several important non-ferrous parts, including silicon balance springs and nickel phosphorous escapement wheels. With this movement they went further than just that and they used their best movement to represent the brand. The other non-magnetic parts developed for Caliber 8508 have yet to be revealed,  but Omega did announce that it expects the first models of the 15,000 Gauss to be available in late 2013.

Using this as their flagship or exhibition model their intentions are to eventually to include the new anti-magnetic technology in all Omega movements produced in-house. Taking a Popular model; the  Seamaster Aqua Terra mating it with a with a revolutionary movement in the Co-Axail caliber, and developing that into an anti magnetic movement Omega has created something truly swell.

(images courtesy of: Omega, and Omegablog.net)

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