The Breitling Watch Source Forums

Scott Carpenter discusses how he was involved in designing the Cosmonaute.

"I asked Scott what brands he enjoyed, and he told me he had a relationship with Breitling for a long, long time. He told me that Breitling made a Scott Carpenter watch just for him, made to his specifications that he flew with back in 1962.

The First American to wear a Wristwatch In Space?

Scott Carpenter's daughter wrote a book about Scott named For Spacious Skies and she shared this snippet with me from her research:

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."

http://rolexblog.blogspot.com/2008/08/n ... anaut.html

Good link, thanks for sharing.

I was reading a discussion about watches in space with contributions from Carpenter's daughter Kris Stoever on a forum the other day. Here's the link

http://www.collectspace.com/ubb/Forum14/HTML/000461.html

Interesting story regarding the first Cosmo...
"Unfortunately, Scott's chronograph was submerged in seawater during his recovery and was not very watertight. It was returned to Breitling for repair following the flight and, in a nice gesture, they replaced it with a pristine model.

Of course, today his flown watch would be very valuable, but that was not appreciated at the time. He was happy to get a replacement. The original has never been seen again, even after efforts by Breitling to track it down recently."

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Thanks Sharkmouth.



I bet he was - why would he want the old battered one when he could have a nice new one.

That would be a nice thing to turn up at a car boot sale.

Hmmm, there seems to be something strange going on here, turns out Aldrin's lost his Speedmaster as well!

http://legacy.signonsandiego.com/uniont ... 0moon.html

To lose one watch may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.