Omega

Louis Brandt was 23 when, in 1848, he began assembling key-wound pocket watches in La Chaux-de-Fonds from parts made by local craftsmen, selling them across Europe with England as his main market. His sons Louis-Paul and César joined in 1877 and, in 1879, decided to manufacture industrially on American lines, moving to Biel/Bienne, where their first machine-made calibre appeared in January 1880. By the end of the decade the firm was the largest in Swiss watchmaking.

In 1894 the brothers introduced the 19-ligne Omega calibre, built with interchangeable parts under full in-house control. It was so successful that it gave the company its name, and by 1903, the year both brothers died, the firm had renamed itself after the brand and become a public company, then making 240,000 watches a year with 800 staff.

Their heir Paul-Emile Brandt, not yet 24, steered the company through the First World War and worked towards a union with Tissot, which led in 1930 to the holding company SSIH. Lemania, the maker of Omega's best-known chronograph movements, joined soon after, and Omega has timed the Olympic Games since 1932. The Seamaster followed in 1948, the Constellation in 1952 and the Speedmaster chronograph in 1957.

NASA qualified the Speedmaster for all crewed space missions in 1965, and on 21 July 1969 Buzz Aldrin wore one on the Moon. By the 1970s SSIH was Switzerland's largest producer of finished watches, but the quartz crisis and the recession of 1975 to 1980 left it dependent on the banks, and Seiko considered buying Omega.

SSIH merged with ASUAG in 1983 and was taken over by investors led by Nicolas Hayek; the group became the Swatch Group in 1998. Omega has been associated with James Bond since GoldenEye in 1995. In 1999 it introduced George Daniels's co-axial escapement into series production, and in 2007 the 8500, its first calibre designed entirely in-house since 1984. In 2015 it introduced Master Chronometer certification, which adds tests, including resistance to strong magnetic fields, to the COSC standard.

The Omega Museum in Biel/Bienne opened to the public in 1984. In March 2022 Omega and Swatch released the bioceramic MoonSwatch, and Omega timed the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games.