Of the 1000 calibre 1511 watches produced approximately 900 had solid 14-carat bezels and plaque and 100 had stainless steel bezels and plaques, specifically designed for the French market in response to French law at the time requiring visible hall marks on all gold.
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The Marine Chronometer calibre 1511 was presented in a stainless steel case with integral bracelet with a solid 14 carat gold bezel and 14 carat gold plaque which bears the individual serial number of the movement. All 1000 watches were certified as Marine Chronometers and presented with certificates showing their individual performance over the 63-day period. All 1000 examples were sent to the Besançon in France for testing of their chronometer status and after 63 days of relentless testing (including temperature variation testing) the mean variation was less than two thousandth of a second per day. It was released to the market in two versions of 1000 units each.Ĭalibre 1511: Marine Chronometer, this watch was certified at the Besançon Institute. These prototype watches were no calibre variations but alternative designs for cases and dials which ultimately led to the production watch.īy 1974 Omega had developed a more stable production version of the original calibre 1500 Megaquartz. There were numerous other prototypes of the calibre 1510 watches, most of which were around case design, there are a number in private hands as well as a selection of prototype case designs and dial variations at the Omega museum in Bienne, Switzerland. The owner, Omega collector Thomas Dick, tested the watch and concluded that the battery life of the twin (344) cells was approximately 5 weeks, however the accuracy when bench tested was 0.03 seconds per day, still equating to 12 second per year. One of the major flaws of the calibre 1500 was battery consumption (from the twin cells), although untested until recently when one of the prototypes came to market as a running watch in 2011. The design of the calibre 1500 was modular, which translated into the production watch, however the movement design and layout of the final calibre 1511 and subsequent calibre 1516 was completely different. These watches were the first to feature a time zone adjuster, which allowed the hour to be adjusted without interfering with the minute or second hand, this is a feature, followed through into the production watch alongside the later introduction of a second trimmer. The five calibre 1500 watches produced achieved the required 1 second per month accuracy through a stable (non thermo compensated) quartz resonator as part of an integrated circuit which divided the huge frequency to produce pulses which ran the electromagnetic motor. The lenticular crystal oscillator in the calibre 1500, 1510, 15 was developed in the UK and used solely in the Megaquartz calibre 2400 series. This significantly improved performance in time keeping was to be achieved by the development of a circular quartz resonator that vibrated at 2,359,356 times per second (a frequency of 2,359,356 Hz or ≈ 2.4 MHz), by comparison the Beta 21 quartz resonator (which as a watch had an accuracy of 5 seconds per month) vibrated at 8192 times per second. The development of the calibre 1500 and subsequent successors cost Omega 30 million Swiss Francs with the sole intention to produce a wristwatch of unparalleled accuracy and performance. Known as the ‘Elephant’, there are rumored to have been only five examples of this watch made by Omega. The first prototypes of the ‘1500 family’ quartz watch (which later developed into the Marine Chronometer) were presented at the Basel Fair in 1970 as calibre 1500, developed by Omega and the Battelle Geneva Research Institute.
in 1976 the calibre 1516 Marine Chronometer was introduced with smaller case dimensions and altered movement, although performance remained the same, sales began in 1974 and the watch remained in Omega line up until 1978.įamous owners of Omega Marine Chronometers have included Jaques Cousteau and Eric Tabarly.
The watch was introduced to the market in 1974 under calibre 1511, having an unrivalled accuracy of 12 seconds per year thanks to the revolutionary 2.4 MHz quartz circuit.
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