zOwie Omega Discussion Forum

: That surely is puzzling..... I believe that
: Omega did this to continue along the lines
: of past Omega SMP watches. If you take a
: look at the 2nd generation of SMPs, you'll
: see that they have a Rolex-looking bezel
: (with long indices from 1-15 just like
: today, but with the '10' marked at 10). My
: guess is that Omega just added the little
: dots to the rest of the unmarked bezel and
: decided just to get rid of the '10' just to
: be consistent with the surrounding 'line'
: indices. Imagine a '10' next to all of those
: lines..... Maybe the '1' in the number ten
: looks too much like another indice? It could
: 'maybe' be more confusing? These are just
: pure guesses though.....

: The lines also could prevent the number 10 from
: being there. There just is not enough space
: to write a 2 digit number without having to
: sacrifice a few lines (as in the 2nd
: gernation bezel). Maybe Omega wanted the
: Bond SMP to be also a dress watch (hence
: skeleton hands and clean bezel without ten?)
: as well as a divers watch?

This just goes to show you how often I use my bezel (can I admit that in four years I have NEVER used it????).

I now see that the bezel actually does measure elapsed time rather than time remaining. What puzzles me is that I remember reading an article or a post when I bought my first Omega that explained why those lines from 0-15 were there. Of course, that was about four years ago, so I could have just misinterpreted it. I guess it's time to put me in a nursing home.

Still, it does seem odd that Omega and Rolex both put these lines from 0-15 when that would be the time a diver would be LEAST concerned with. If he's only been under for 2 minutes, it's not a big deal.

Then again, what do I know? I'm not a diver and I'm obviously not an authority on bezels....