Diving Watch - History

History

The history of efforts to use watches underwater and to make watches that are water resistant, or waterproof and to make dive watches goes back to perhaps the 17th century. In the 19th century water and dust resistant watches were usually one-off pieces custom made for a particular customer and described as "Explorer's Watches". Early in the 20th century such watches were industrially produced for military and commercial distribution. Like their predecessors early 20th century dive watches were developed in response to meet the needs of several different but related groups: explorers, navies, and professional divers.

Omega SA is credited as the creator of the world's first industrially produced diving watch intended for commercial distribution, the Omega "Marine", introduced in 1932. After a series of trials undertaken by the Swiss Laboratory for Horology in Neuchâtel in May 1937, the watch was certified as being able to withstand a pressure of 1.37 MPa (13.5 atm), equivalent to a depth of 135 m (443 ft), without any water intake whatsoever.

Following a request made by the Royal Italian Navy in September 1935 for a luminous underwater watch for divers Panerai offered "Radiomir" underwater timepieces in 1936.

In addition, a large number of "canteen" style dive watches by Hamilton, Elgin or Waltham were made to military specification during and after World War II. However, these watches were made in small numbers, and were not intended for large-scale commercial distribution. Today, interest in these watches is limited to collectors.

In 1953 Lip-Blancpain's Fifty Fathoms waterproof watch came on the market in France. Various models were issued by Blancpain in small quantities to the military in several countries, including US and French Navy combat diver teams. The fifty fathoms was worn by Jacques Cousteau and his divers during the underwater film "Le monde du silence", which won the Palme d'or at the Cannes film festival in 1956, and in the US when TV star Lloyd Bridges wore a Blancpain Fifty Fathoms dive watch in a photo that appeared on the cover of the February 1962 edition of Skin Diver Magazine.

The Rolex Submariner was introduced at the Basel Watch Fair in 1954 which coincided with the development of self-contained underwater breathing apparatus, known as scuba. In 1961 Rolex began to include a skindiver handbook with the Submariner, then available in two models, one water resistant to 200 m (660 ft), the other, less expensive version, to 100 m (330 ft). It was the choice of watch for the character of 007 in the first ten James Bond films, causing the "Sub" to achieve an iconic status.

In 1959, the United States Navy Experimental Diving Unit evaluated five diving watches that included the Bulova US Navy Submersible Wrist Watch, Enicar Sherpa Diver 600, Enicar Seapearl 600, Blancpain Fifty Fathoms, and the Rolex Oyster Perpetual.

During the 1960s commercial work in the oceans and seas created professional diving organisations that needed more robust watches designed for diving operations at greater depths. This led to the development of the first 'ultra water resistant' watches like the Rolex Sea-Dweller 2000 (2000 ft = 610 m) that became available in 1967 and was produced in several variations and the Omega Seamaster Professional 600m/2000 ft also known as the "Omega PloProf" (Plongeur Professionel) that came available in 1970 and was produced in several variations.

In 1983, the US Navy Experimental Diving Unit evaluated several digital watches for use by US Navy divers.

In 1996 the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) introduced the standards and features for diving watches regulated by the ISO 6425 - Divers' watches international standard. Testing diving watches for ISO 6425 compliance is voluntary and involves costs, so not every manufacturer present their watches for certification according to this standard.

Many contemporary sports watches owe their design to diving watches.

The vast majority of divers now use electronic, wrist-worn dive computers. A dive computer or decompression meter is a device used by a scuba diver to measure the time and depth of a dive so that a safe ascent profile can be calculated and displayed so that the diver can avoid decompression sickness. Diving watches and depth gauges are however still commonly used by divers as backup instruments for overcoming dive computer malfunctions.