Omega has a lot of history with the Olympics. As the timekeeper for the 1948 Summer Olympic Games in London, the luxury watch company launched the Seamaster that same year. Now, as the Olympics heads to London again next month, Omega, which again will serve as timekeeper, is launching a limited edition Seamaster 1948 Co-Axial "London 2012" watch.

The water-resistant watch is being produced in a limited edition of 1,948 pieces, each in a special London 2012 box. The back of the watch salutes the London games, with an 18 carat yellow gold medallion embossed with the London 2012 Olympic Games logo.

The front of the watch features a polished and brushed stainless steel case with polished bezel and lugs, 18 carat white gold Arabic numerals at 12, 3, 6 and 9 o'clock, a diamond-polished hour and minute hands and a blue steel small seconds hand. Its crown is embossed with a vintage Ω logo and comes with a black leather strap and vintage polished stainless steel buckle.

While the watch's exterior recalls its illustrious past, its inner workings reflect 21st-century technology. It is powered by the exclusive Omega caliber 2202, an officially-certified chronometer equipped with a co-axial escapement on three-levels and free sprung-balance.

The unique watch, which retails for $6,800 at the Omega Galleria store, may just be the ultimate Olympic Games collectable.

To mark its Olympic presence, Omega has filmed a television commercial featuring athletes and the Rolling Stones' Mick Jagger and Keith Richards performing their 1981 hit, "Start Me Up." Except for 1996 (when Swatch was the official timekeeper for the Atlanta Olympics) and 1964 (when Seiko got the contract for the Tokyo Olympics), Omega has been the official Olympics timekeeper since 1932, when it supplied a few dozen stop watches for the Los Angeles games, reports The Financial Times.

The technology has become much more sophisticated now, as anyone who watched the 2008 Olympics in Beijing when U.S. swimmer Michael Phelps won his record seventh gold medal, edging out Serbian-American swimmer Milorad Čavić by 1/100 of a second in the men's 100-meter butterfly, knows. Though Čavić was ahead much of the race, Phelps touched the time device at the end of the pool first.

In London, Omega will introduce a light indication system for swimming events called the Swimming Show, in which lights mounted on the blocks illuminate to show first, second and third positions when the swimmers touch them at the end of a race.