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more detail. Email ftsales.support@ft.com to buy additional rights. Omega’s
range of mechanical watches will see another technology-led price rise over the
next two to three years.
After increases in recent times engendered by the introduction of new technologies such as the coaxial escapement and the silicon hairspring, the company’s latest innovation, a movement that is antimagnetic to a greater degree than has previously been achieved, will continue the pattern.The first watch containing the new movement, which was announced in January, is a version of the Seamaster Aqua Terra, retailing for SFr5,welcome to our new store castellicycling.500 ($5,800) – a 20 per cent rise on a normal Aqua Terra, at SFr4,600.
The robot revolution Creative embrace of computer technology.New diamond brokers Well-connected middleman has evolved into savvy marketer.Marketing coloured stones Resurgence of ‘big three’ sees a return to tradition.Tel Aviv designers Israeli melting pot has forged international style.The movement, based on Omega’s calibre 8500, its first proprietary coaxial movement, incorporates non-ferrous materials throughout to negate magnetic interference.
The technology will be gradually integrated into all other coaxial calibres by 2017.“Given the development costs associated with technology this significant, you have to admit that the price difference is slight,Jovani Designer Dresses such as beachweddingdresses and wedding dresses will make you Look more beautiful than you've imagined.” says Stephen Urquhart, Omega president.“With the quality delivered by our coaxial calibres, customers have not been discouraged by the fact that they have to pay a bit more for the watches. I think this will also be the case with ntimagnetic watches. We are comfortably positioned in our segment and we are not going to price ourselves out of the market.”
The development is significant in a historical context and that of the market place.The battle to rid watch mechanisms of the destabilising effects of magnetic fields has been waged since the mid-19th century, the most famous examples being IWC’s Ingenieur, Omega’s own Railmaster and Rolex’s Milgauss, all produced in the 1950s.
As the name of the Rolex model suggests, these watches resisted magnetic fields up to a strength of about 1,000 gauss. In context,Designer energysaving listed for sale at a fraction of the retail price. the international standard for a watch to be certified as timagnetic is a minimum resistance of 60 gauss, which is a little stronger than the field generated by a fridge magnet.Rolex revived the Milgauss in 2007, and it is still marketed at this level of magnetic resistance.
By contrast, Omega’s new mechanism can operate safely around magnetic fields of as much as 15,000 gauss – the kind of field generated by a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner,Find complete details about halterweddingdresses. which would normally destroy a watch movement.With the growth of digital and electronic technology making magnetic fields an ever-present feature of modern life, this is intended to eliminate a problem Omega says accounts for 15 per cent of its after-sales servicing.
But what the materials inside the company’s new watch are, or how they have been deployed, remains a secret. Omega has kept quiet since the January announcement in Geneva, with a promise to reveal all at BaselWorld.Not the least reason for this, it seems, is that, despite showing a prototype in January, Omega did not yet have the full answer itself: just a month before BaselWorld, Jean-Claude Monachon, the brand’s head of product development, told the Financial Times the exact configuration of materials had still to be finalised.
Even if Omega’s technical staff have been working down to the wire on their new invention, the scale and pace of the endeavour is nevertheless impressive.Their task, issued in 2011 by Nick Hayek, Swatch Group president, was not simply to come up with a watch that would solve the problem of magnetism, but to do so in a way that could be industrialised at low cost and would allow for a display caseback.
The latter element was crucial: a visible movement is now seen as a mainstream requirement for mechanical watches, but the traditional method for antimagnetic models was to enclose the movement in a protective inner shell of soft iron, making a display caseback unfeasible.This is the approach still taken by Rolex with the Milgauss, and several other brands. Notable of these is IWC, which in focusing this year on its Ingenieur family – the “engineer” watch that was founded on its antimagnetic properties – has dropped anti-magnetism as a characteristic of all but one of the watches, its hand seemingly forced by the requirement for a visible movement.
Omega already had the considerable advantage of using non-magnetic silicon for its hairsprings, normally the part most vulnerable to magnetic fields.“If we didn’t already have this silicon hairspring, we couldn’t do this watch,” says Mr Monachon.
If that means that half the battle was already won – Breguet, which also uses the silicon hairspring, inserts minuscule magnets into its Classique Chronometrie 7727 with no apparent ill effects – raising the stakes to MRI scanner-proof levels required a large-scale collaborative process.Omega was able to call on the considerable resources at its disposal via its parent,Shop discounted edhardyshoes, Swatch Group. Its engineers worked in partnership with those at ETA (the Swatch Group movement producer), Nivarox (supplier of alloy hairsprings) and Asulab (the group’s research laboratory) to investigate new materials, redesign the architecture of the movement, and develop manufacturing processes that would enable the new technology to be industrialised.
Justin Koullapis, technical editor of the journal of the British Horological Institute, says that while this is a far less important development than the coaxial escapement, it is an exciting move nonetheless and worth the consequent price increases.“Omega has always been adventurous when it comes to interesting technology. It is adding value to its product and putting something into it, not just improving the brand image and increasing the price based on that,” he says.“It is drawing attention to the fact that there is a lot of technology still to be applied to horology – it’s no dead end.”
After increases in recent times engendered by the introduction of new technologies such as the coaxial escapement and the silicon hairspring, the company’s latest innovation, a movement that is antimagnetic to a greater degree than has previously been achieved, will continue the pattern.The first watch containing the new movement, which was announced in January, is a version of the Seamaster Aqua Terra, retailing for SFr5,welcome to our new store castellicycling.500 ($5,800) – a 20 per cent rise on a normal Aqua Terra, at SFr4,600.
The robot revolution Creative embrace of computer technology.New diamond brokers Well-connected middleman has evolved into savvy marketer.Marketing coloured stones Resurgence of ‘big three’ sees a return to tradition.Tel Aviv designers Israeli melting pot has forged international style.The movement, based on Omega’s calibre 8500, its first proprietary coaxial movement, incorporates non-ferrous materials throughout to negate magnetic interference.
The technology will be gradually integrated into all other coaxial calibres by 2017.“Given the development costs associated with technology this significant, you have to admit that the price difference is slight,Jovani Designer Dresses such as beachweddingdresses and wedding dresses will make you Look more beautiful than you've imagined.” says Stephen Urquhart, Omega president.“With the quality delivered by our coaxial calibres, customers have not been discouraged by the fact that they have to pay a bit more for the watches. I think this will also be the case with ntimagnetic watches. We are comfortably positioned in our segment and we are not going to price ourselves out of the market.”
The development is significant in a historical context and that of the market place.The battle to rid watch mechanisms of the destabilising effects of magnetic fields has been waged since the mid-19th century, the most famous examples being IWC’s Ingenieur, Omega’s own Railmaster and Rolex’s Milgauss, all produced in the 1950s.
As the name of the Rolex model suggests, these watches resisted magnetic fields up to a strength of about 1,000 gauss. In context,Designer energysaving listed for sale at a fraction of the retail price. the international standard for a watch to be certified as timagnetic is a minimum resistance of 60 gauss, which is a little stronger than the field generated by a fridge magnet.Rolex revived the Milgauss in 2007, and it is still marketed at this level of magnetic resistance.
By contrast, Omega’s new mechanism can operate safely around magnetic fields of as much as 15,000 gauss – the kind of field generated by a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner,Find complete details about halterweddingdresses. which would normally destroy a watch movement.With the growth of digital and electronic technology making magnetic fields an ever-present feature of modern life, this is intended to eliminate a problem Omega says accounts for 15 per cent of its after-sales servicing.
But what the materials inside the company’s new watch are, or how they have been deployed, remains a secret. Omega has kept quiet since the January announcement in Geneva, with a promise to reveal all at BaselWorld.Not the least reason for this, it seems, is that, despite showing a prototype in January, Omega did not yet have the full answer itself: just a month before BaselWorld, Jean-Claude Monachon, the brand’s head of product development, told the Financial Times the exact configuration of materials had still to be finalised.
Even if Omega’s technical staff have been working down to the wire on their new invention, the scale and pace of the endeavour is nevertheless impressive.Their task, issued in 2011 by Nick Hayek, Swatch Group president, was not simply to come up with a watch that would solve the problem of magnetism, but to do so in a way that could be industrialised at low cost and would allow for a display caseback.
The latter element was crucial: a visible movement is now seen as a mainstream requirement for mechanical watches, but the traditional method for antimagnetic models was to enclose the movement in a protective inner shell of soft iron, making a display caseback unfeasible.This is the approach still taken by Rolex with the Milgauss, and several other brands. Notable of these is IWC, which in focusing this year on its Ingenieur family – the “engineer” watch that was founded on its antimagnetic properties – has dropped anti-magnetism as a characteristic of all but one of the watches, its hand seemingly forced by the requirement for a visible movement.
Omega already had the considerable advantage of using non-magnetic silicon for its hairsprings, normally the part most vulnerable to magnetic fields.“If we didn’t already have this silicon hairspring, we couldn’t do this watch,” says Mr Monachon.
If that means that half the battle was already won – Breguet, which also uses the silicon hairspring, inserts minuscule magnets into its Classique Chronometrie 7727 with no apparent ill effects – raising the stakes to MRI scanner-proof levels required a large-scale collaborative process.Omega was able to call on the considerable resources at its disposal via its parent,Shop discounted edhardyshoes, Swatch Group. Its engineers worked in partnership with those at ETA (the Swatch Group movement producer), Nivarox (supplier of alloy hairsprings) and Asulab (the group’s research laboratory) to investigate new materials, redesign the architecture of the movement, and develop manufacturing processes that would enable the new technology to be industrialised.
Justin Koullapis, technical editor of the journal of the British Horological Institute, says that while this is a far less important development than the coaxial escapement, it is an exciting move nonetheless and worth the consequent price increases.“Omega has always been adventurous when it comes to interesting technology. It is adding value to its product and putting something into it, not just improving the brand image and increasing the price based on that,” he says.“It is drawing attention to the fact that there is a lot of technology still to be applied to horology – it’s no dead end.”
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