Speedmaster Chronoscope

Two things collectors trade notes on with this watch. First, the tachymeter that keeps going. On a normal chronograph the bezel tachymeter runs out of usefulness at 60, because below that the seconds hand has passed the full minute. Omega solved that on the Chronoscope by continuing the scale onto the dial rings, so the bezel's 60 mark carries down to 55 and lower on one ring, then 29 down to 20 on the innermost ring. That lets you read speed even when a kilometre or mile takes up to three minutes to cover, which the original 1940s pieces this design references also did. Second, the scales actually work and people learn them. The pulsometer is printed for 30 pulsations: start the chronograph, count 30 heartbeats, stop, and the seconds hand points at the pulse rate in beats per minute; 30 beats in 20 seconds reads as 80 bpm. The telemeter measures distance by sound, the classic use being lightning to thunder to find how far a storm sits. The Chronoscope name itself, from the Greek for observing time, is Omega telling you plainly that the dial is a set of instruments, not decoration. That is the collector's hook here: a modern Speedmaster whose whole reason to exist is that it does something, and that separates it from every panda-dial chronograph bought purely to look at.