The Breitling Museum On Line 1884 - 2016 This is Unofficial Breitling Website It is not commercial and purely informational website it is not affilated to Breitling SA for the current collection please refer to www.breitling.com
Scott Carpenter said "Early on in Project Mercury, for an unmanned Atlas launch, I went to Perth, Australia and flew with the RAAF (Royal Australian Air Force), and it was there I saw the Breitling Navitimer, which had been issued to the RAAF pilots." "Timekeeping was one of my areas of responsibility as part of my overall task developing Project Mercury navigation systems. My thought was that the Navitimer would be perfect for the Project Mercury astronauts." "The Breitling Navitimer required some redesign for space-flight. For one, the astronauts would not need a tachymeter (a scale with which one measures hourly production rates). I had them replace the tachymeter with a 24-hour dial.""Breitling sent me the redesigned watch, called the Cosmonaut (Breitling was in the French-speaking part of Switzerland, and the cosmonaute was French for astronaut), four days before my flight aboard Aurora 7. It was basically a Navitimer with a circular slide rule." As far as I can tell, Scott Carpenter was the first American Astronaut to wear a wristwatch in space. When Scott splashed down in his Aurora 7 capsule his Breitling got wet and experienced some water damage. Scott sent it back to Breitling for repair, but Breitling pulled the switcho-chango and sent him back a different watch, thus keeping the first wristwatch flown in space for their museum. As you can see from the Breitling advertisement pictured above, Breitling advertised their watch as follows, "Watch in Space! This watch orbited the earth in May, 1962. It is the Navitimer, the watch that timed the Astronauts, produced by Breitling." Breitling later issued a Scott Carpenter Cosmonaute watch based on his 1961-1962 design. The original redesigned watch Breitling customized for Scott Carpenter was probably the first wrist-watch to be flown on an American manned orbital mission.
Scott said "They sent it back to me and removed the word Navitimer, and put the word Cosmonaut on it."
"The Brietling Super Ocean is a watch I have only researched in full extent once I had it in my hands, because prior to this I had never encountered one. So when it came across our team for the Start-Stop-Reset auctions, I looked at it and asked myself ‘OK what is this actually?’ Well it’s a nice chronograph – steel case, with a black dial, white subsidiary dial, black bezel. The through deeper research I came to realize two incredible things, firstly that this unknown watch here was the world’s first chronograph where the subsidiary dials were executed in an opposing color to the main dial. Next, this was the first chronograph with a revolving dive bezel. Think about it, this watch has such an incredibly prominent position in horological history and we’ve never really knew of it!" Read more ...
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