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Forty years of loyal and faithful service are the words on the back of this Omega 166.0202. United States Steel honors John Kocak in an inscription dated October 1976, while the circled USS at six on the dial names the same company.
Omega automatics carrying that emblem are a documented kind of object. Other examples have surfaced with a USS emblem on the dial and a presentation inscription on the back, one dated August 1973, another from 1975 and a third also marking forty years, so this was an established practice rather than a single commission. The United States Steel version of the long service watch was an Omega automatic with the corporate emblem on the dial, and that one addition turned a catalogue Omega into a company piece.
United States Steel itself dates from 1901, when a group headed by Elbert Gary and J.P. Morgan bought Carnegie’s steel company and combined it with their holdings in Federal Steel, and in the decades that followed it supplied steel for buildings, bridges and rail lines across the country. Seventy five years after that founding, its name was engraved on the back of this watch: United States Steel honors John Kocak for forty years of loyal and faithful service, October 1976. That is the whole of the record, a name, a span of years and a month, and we think it is enough. Four decades of one working life, acknowledged by the employer that received them, is a specific thing for a watch to carry.
The watch is an Omega automatic with a date at three, a silver sunburst dial, applied Omega emblem and lettering, striped baton markers with round plots and the circled USS above the Swiss Made signature at six. The dial carries no model name, only the Omega emblem, the Omega name and the word Automatic beneath twelve. Omega’s archive places the 166.0202 reference family in its 1976 international collection with the automatic calibers 1010 and 1012, and this example is catalogued as an Omega 166.0202 with the 1010. The stainless steel case is round, 35mm across and 42mm lug to lug on 18mm lugs, with a smooth polished bezel, a raised crystal, curved lugs and a signed crown. It is fitted with a grey Babele strap on an OTTUHR buckle and fits wrists up to 8 inches.
What we value is the specificity. A name, a count of years and a month are cut into the back, and the company whose emblem sits on the front is the one doing the honoring.
