Saturday, September 6, 2008

Horology at its Olympic best


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The Olympic Games at Beijing will put all previous editions in the shade as far as time- keeping equipment and staff is concerned. Time keeping and data handling for the 302 competitions being held at 38 venues is expected to involve the use of 250 tons of equipment and well over 300 technicians and engineers.

70 large electronic score boards will be required. Before the equipment were shipped from Omega’s factory in Biel in Switzerland, the whole arsenal of special timing devices, photo camera, display boards, transponders and touch pads would have been thoroughly checked.

Omega triggers the trend

This is a far cry from the Los Angeles games in 1932 where official time keeping by a watch company was introduced for the first time.Omega’s subsidiary Lemania manufactured stop watches with chronographs to be used for the first time in Olympics. Omega of course, has the distinction of being the time keeper of the Olympic Games for the 24th time at Beijing.

As the quadrennial games moved from Los Angeles to Berlin in 1940, Omega supplied 185 chronographs roughly 6 times the number as in Los Angeles. The company had to then deploy a full time repair squad to attend to the chronographs. In 1948, London witnessed the camera with a timer for the first time from the Omega company. Londoners nicknamed the gadget as the ‘Magic Eye’.

Helsinki in 1952, received Quartz technology from Omega for the first time. It is at Helsinki, that time recorders could record one hundredth of a second for the first time. First semi automatic timing device with a digital display known as the eight-o-matic swim timer was introduced in Melborne in 1954.

The 1960 Rome games witnessed the first black African Abebe Bikila winning a gold in the marathon. Omega once again recorded the time. First full electronic time keeping was introduced in Mexico City in 1968 where Omega introduced ‘touch pads’. At the 1976 Montreal games, Nadia Comaneci created history by scoring a perfect 10. Omega’s electronic score board was not designed for displaying 10.0, so the score was shown as 1.00. Omega’s tryst with the Olympics continued at Moscow in 1980, followed by the 1984 Los Angeles games again and then to Seoul in 1988.

Swatch takes the baton

The younger and the more illustrious of the family, Swatch, took forward the mantle from Omega for the next three Olympics. Atlanta, Sydney and Athens chose Swatch for time keeping. Swatch brought 20 innovations to the 1996 Atlanta games. The most notable was the ‘Global positioning system’ in the centenary games.

Swatch GPS measured time for sailing regattas. Sydney in 2000 witnessed the time keeper Swatch utilizing the internet for the first time. Within 15 seconds of the winner hitting the touch pad, the results appeared on the net. By the time Olympic Games returned to Athens in 2004, 108 years had gone by from the time of the first Olympic Games in Athens. Athens witnessed 44 times as many participants and 7 times as many events as in 1896.

Swatch did the time keeping for the event that was watched by 3.9 billion people around the world on television. Time keeping for Beijing Olympics is once again with the Swatch group but moved back specifically to the Omega brand. Visitors to the Chinese Metropolitan Museum can admire the very stop watch that was used to measure the time in the 1932 games. To commemorate the event, Omega has produced a limited edition ‘Pocket watch 1932′ hand-finished in 18 karat gold. Each one is worth Swiss Francs 95,000.

25 and still ticking

As the Olympic Games returns to London in 2012 for the second time, Swatch Group CEO, Nickolas Hayek has already signed a contract with IOC for Omega to be the time keeper to the Olympics for the 25th time. As Nick Hayek explains, “our commitment to the Olympics games is much more than just a name on a display board or a screen. All of the Swatch Group companies share the core philosophy of the Olympic movement, which celebrates humanity more than anything else.” Games, sports and adventure have pushed time keepers to constantly innovate. The contribution of Olympics to the world of horology is immense.

Not surprisingly, watches specially manufactured for the Olympics are a great hit amongst collectors. Enjoy Beijing’s time keeping with the Swatch group!

This first appeared in the "Smartbuy" section of BusinessLine of Aug 20,2008

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