Today in Geneva, announced a new movement that is resistant to magnetic fields greater than 1.5 tesla (15,000 gauss). Introduced inside of a Seamster Aqua Terra, the co-axial caliber 8508 was introduced by members of ASULAB, ETA and , all of whom had a hand in developing the new movement, which has numerous patents pending. How did they manage something 15x more resistant than a Milgauss and 2x more than even these Ingenieurs?
Most anti-magnetic watches encase their movement within soft iron, like Rolex's Faraday cage, which distributes electromagnetic radiation in a way that cancels the field's effect on what lies inside. has removed this step, however, opting instead to construct the movement itself of non-ferrous materials. An obvious enough solution, it would seem. But it did take the combined efforts of various Swatch group assets,
including scientists and metallurgists, to engineer the movement.
Anti-magnetic watches have been around for the better part of 60 years. The most commonly known is the Rolex Milgauss, which was developed for scientists working at CERN who were subjected to powerful magnetic fields in their work. As the name suggests, the Milgauss is resistant to 1000 gauss (unit of magnetic induction), which was enough to protect the timekeeping functions intact in the CERN environment. For reference, a small iron magnet measures around 100 gauss. So Omega's new caliber 8508 should maintain accuracy within any environment you can throw at it, unless of course your travels take you to the surface of a neutron star.
Omega's presentation in Geneva highlighted the company's history of technological innovation, as well as the challenges that building an a-magnetic watch presents. Jean-Claude Monachon explained that magnets are now present in our daily lives more than ever, which, if true, would make this announcement rather timely. We'll see more of this movement at Basel in April and we can expect to see the new caliber 8508 introduced to market sometime in 2013.
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