Sturmanskie, Russia’s ‘First Watch in Space’

     In 1961, about 8 years before Apollo 11 carried the Omega Speedmaster through the Earth's atmosphere to reach the lunar surface on July 16, 1969, Yuri Gagarin, the world's first astronaut to travel beyond the Earth's atmosphere into space and return safely to the surface, carried with him a watch known as the Sturmanskie.

Amidst the heat of the Cold War, Poljot, the first Soviet watch manufacturing and development factory, which was developing watches for Soviet space exploration, opened up to international collaboration. LIP, a major French developer and manufacturer, was chosen to co-develop the Sturmanskie watch. Utilizing the high-precision R26 movement from LIP, the watch was refined to be highly accurate, shock-resistant against the vibrations of the spacecraft, and resistant to magnetic field fluctuations, resulting in the first Sturmanskie watch to venture into space.

The delivery of the first Sturmanskie watch to Yuri Gagarin around 1961 is recorded as likely having taken place at the Poljot factory during Gagarin’s visit. The watch featured a stainless steel case measuring 33 mm in diameter, 12 mm in height, with 16 mm lugs. It had a screw-down case back for improved water resistance and was powered by the K26 movement, which was developed from the R26 to function in zero gravity. On April 12, 1961, the date Vostok 1 was launched into the atmosphere, the Sturmanskie watch soared from the Earth, orbited the planet once in 1 hour and 48 minutes at an altitude that broke through the initial atmosphere—the first time in history at 301 kilometers from the Earth's surface—and landed at 10:50 AM Russian time. The Sturmanskie became the first watch to go into space and return safely, marking the beginning of the watch industry's contribution to space research and setting the stage for future successes.