The Smithsonian Speedmasters

Visited the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum this week and was looking forward to seeing a Speedmaster, but ended up seeing three! Neil Armstrong’s (never made it onto the lunar surface, he hung it in the cabin of the control center due to instrument failure, Michael Collins’, and Gordon Copper’s from Gemini 5. There I was with 68 145.022 transitional. I’m assuming all of these were the 012’s with the 321 movement since that is what was technically flight qualified, but the 68 transitional has the 861 but still the dial identical to the 012’s (with the applied metal logo and long indices). The 68 featured the flat bottom seconds sweep, while most 012’s featured the teardrop. However, as you can see, 2 of these had the flat bottoms. I’ve seen a few late model 012’s with the flat bottoms, so who knows if these were original or service hands (suspecting the former).

Either way, it was SO cool to walk around with a piece of history on my wrist!!