By Onell R. Soto
STAFF WRITER

June 20, 2004

A San Diego judge has dismissed a federal suit by a Long Beach man who claimed he owns the watch worn by former astronaut Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin Jr. when he walked on the moon in 1969.

The dismissal Wednesday came after the National Aeronautics and Space Administration concluded Stephen Morley's watch is not the one Aldrin wore.

Morley, a retired sales clerk, filed the suit last year in an attempt to authenticate the watch he bought for $175 from a college student whose father found it on a Santa Barbara beach.

Collectors have long sought Aldrin's watch, the only one worn on the moon. Some call it the "holy grail" of timepieces. It disappeared in the early 1970s after Aldrin shipped it to the Smithsonian Institution.

Morley agreed to drop the suit, rather than continue fighting the government, according to court records.

Morley's lawyer claimed that, if authentic, the watch would be worth between $2 million and $4 million.

Efforts to reach Morley and his lawyer yesterday were unsuccessful.

After Morley filed suit, NASA and Aldrin insisted that if the watch was authentic, it belonged to them. NASA said the watch belonged in the Smithsonian; Aldrin said the watch was his personal property.

At the time, lawyers said it was likely Morley had the moon watch.

Aldrin and other astronauts were issued Omega Speedmaster watches during the Apollo program. Identical timepieces were sold to the public.

Aldrin wore his watch when he became the second man to step on the moon July 20, 1969. It is the only watch ever worn there.

In a book, Aldrin said he last saw the timepiece when it was packed for shipment to the Smithsonian in the early 1970s. When the package arrived at the institute, the watch was missing.

Morley bought a Speedmaster in 1991 and began suspecting it was the moon watch when he found a tiny "43" etched into its back. That was the number collectors believe was assigned to Aldrin's watch.

Yet doubts arose as the lawsuit progressed over the past year.

"After extensive investigation, including the deposition of a former NASA employee involved in the Apollo 11 program, both Aldrin and the United States concluded that the watch was not the watch Aldrin had worn and that they had no interest in the watch," Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Plaxico wrote in papers asking a federal judge to dismiss the suit.

"This case is over," Plaxico said yesterday.

A few weeks ago, before Morley agreed to drop the suit, his lawyer, Richard Van Dyke, said the government's position shouldn't be the final word.

"It's becoming very difficult to conclude whether this is the watch," he said. The Smithsonian should have the documents that would authenticate the watch, but can't come up with them, he said.

"There really is no way for us to know what engravings are supposed to be on this watch," Van Dyke said. "The custody of our nation's artifacts have been entrusted to the wrong people."

Onell Soto: (619) 293-1280; onell.soto@uniontrib.com

OMEGA es la última letra del alfabeto griego, y representa la perfección y el éxito en la consecución de una tarea (cualidades que se han atribuido a OMEGA desde que la compañía fue fundada en La Chaux-de-Fonds, Suiza, en 1848).

El prestigio de la marca en cuanto a innovación y calidad se refiere, ha hecho que ésta reciba numerosos premios a lo largo de una vida de 150 años, comenzando ya en el año 1900 con el Grand Prix de la Feria Mundial de París, y continuando con el récord mundial de precisión con 97.8 puntos concedidos por el observatorio inglés de Kew-Teddington en 1936.

OMEGA siguió formando parte de los mejores, y así ha sido el patrocinador oficial en 21 Juegos Olímpicos, introduciendo con el tiempo numerosas innovaciones en la medición del tiempo en deportes olímpicos, como el primer cronómetro electrónico en los Juegos de Helsinki de 1952 -el mismo año en el que la compañía fue galardonada con la Cruz Olímpica al Mérito por su sobresaliente contribución al mundo del deporte.

Debido a su precisión y fiabilidad el reloj "Speedmaster" de OMEGA fue elegido por la NASA como su cronometrador oficial en 1965, y cuatro años más tarde fue el primer reloj que viajó a la luna, cuando, en julio de 1969 Neil Armstrong dio su famoso "gigante paso para la humanidad".

En años más recientes, OMEGA ha continuado edificando su sólida reputación en precisión y en innovación, presentando el primer reloj de pulsera automático del mundo con torbellino, (lanzado en 1994), así como el revolucionario escape coaxial concebido conjuntamente con el afamado maestro relojero inglés George Daniels, que apareció primero en 1999 en series limitadas. Con esta egregia tradición relojera a sus espaldas, OMEGA tiene una base perfecta para conseguir nuevas proezas relojísticas en el nuevo milenio.