Instruments · Stop-watch
Stopwatch by Omega, Swiss made, single-button type reading 0 - 60 seconds in fifths and 0 - 5 minutes in minutes on subsidiary dial, 1960-79.
- Maker / attribution
- Omega (maker)
- Date
- 1960-1979
- Historical period
- Quartz Revolution (1969 – 1990)
- Country of origin
- Switzerland
- Object type
- Stop-watch
- Holding institution
- Science Museum Group, London
- Accession / object no.
- 1997-1653
- Credit line
- Sotheby's (New Bond St.)
- Catalogue title (original)
- Stopwatch by Omega
Record summary
Held and catalogued by Science Museum Group, London (object number 1997-1653), this is a stop-watch by Omega, made in Switzerland, dated 1960-1979. The Atlas places it in the Quartz Revolution period (1969 – 1990) of its Instruments collection. The record is illustrated with 1 photograph.
Assembled from the source record's structured fields. Dates and attributions are given as the source states them; where a field is missing the Atlas leaves it blank rather than estimating.
Catalogue description
The source record does not include a narrative description. The structured fields above are reproduced from it.
Historical context
Quartz Revolution (1969 – 1990)
Seiko's Astron begins mass quartz timekeeping; traditional industries contract sharply.
Electronic timing replaced mechanical instruments in sport, industry and navigation.
Read the period in the timelineMore instruments from this periodEarlier: Modern Mechanical Horology
Atlas type guide
Timers, stopwatches, chronoscopes and time recorders
Instruments for measuring short intervals or recording when something happened form a large and practical branch of horology. Sports stopwatches and split-seconds timers, laboratory chronoscopes (such as Hipp's, which measured thousandths of a second for psychology and ballistics experiments), metronomes for music, watchmen's clocks that recorded patrol rounds, and the time recorders that clocked factory workers in and out all derive from clock and watch technology.
These objects matter historically because they show timekeeping leaving the observatory and the drawing room and entering industry, science and sport. Many were mass-produced, and their dials, scales and patents chart the rise of electrification and industrial management.
What to look for
- Scales graduated in fifths, tenths or hundredths of a second, or decimal minutes for industrial use.
- Start, stop and reset push-pieces; a second hand that can be stopped independently (split seconds).
- Recording devices: paper discs or tapes, printing mechanisms, keys or punches.
- Patent numbers and dates on the dial or case, which give a terminus post quem.
Dating clues
- Hipp chronoscopes were made from the 1840s into the twentieth century.
- Employee time recorders spread from the 1890s (Bundy, IBM, International Time Recording Co.).
- Quartz and electronic timers replaced mechanical stopwatches in sport from the 1970s.
General guidance written by the Atlas editors about this kind of object. It is not a statement about this particular piece; for that, rely on the source record above and on physical examination.
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