The Dive Watch: Build The Ultimate Watch Collection
Build The Ultimate Watch Collection:
The Dive Watch
The adventurer’s watchA sign hangs in a roadside bar in Cozumel, that Mexican island made world-famous by Jacques-Yves Cousteau, that reads: “Remember the days when the sex was fun and the diving dangerous?” In its early years, the 1950s and ‘60s, scuba diving was on the frontier of adventure. Few people really knew the limits of the human body at depth breathing compressed air. The gear was crude, the science young and the underwater world was alien and unexplored. Those who ventured to go diving were pioneers and true adventurers. Most of their gear was specific to underwater use and foreign to the terrestrial world — except for their watches. These chunky steel timepieces looked unrefined and bulky next to the slim, elegant watches of the day. But a dive watch worn topside identified the man who wore it as someone who took risks and saw things few others would ever see.
As diving became more popular, safer and more accessible, dive watches boomed in popularity. Beyond their use as critical underwater tools, dive watches became symbols of adventure and masculinity. If you wore a dive watch, odds were that you had good stories to tell of exploits in exotic places. That scratch on the crystal? A brush with some coral in Bonaire. Chipped paint on the bezel? Exploring a shipwreck in Truk Lagoon.
A dive watch is the one watch that looks better with wear and tear, not unlike a pickup truck or a good pair of boots.
Bottom timeBefore we get into the essential features of a dive watch, it’s helpful to know a little about diving so that even if you’re not a diver, you can still explain to someone how your watch was designed to be used.
When breathing compressed air from a scuba tank, nitrogen molecules are absorbed into the body’s tissues as small bubbles. Staying too deep for too long and then surfacing without decompressing causes these nitrogen bubbles to remain in the body tissue. This can lead to serious injuries or even death. This is the condition known as “the bends.” To avoid the bends, a diver must track his depth, using a depth gauge, and his bottom time. Enter the dive watch.
In the early 1950s, there were a handful of water-resistant watches, but none were practical for diving use. To keep track of elapsed time, a diver would either have to memorize where the minute hand was upon descending or set the minute hand to “12” before diving, in which case time of day would need to be reset.
In 1953, two Swiss watch companies, Blancpain and Rolex, raced to be the first to release a bona fide dive watch. It is still disputed as to which company was first, but regardless, the features they both shared were extreme water resistance, about 100 meters each, and a rotating outer bezel that allowed a diver to easily monitor elapsed time. Rotate the bezel so that the arrow lines up with the minute hand, and as time passes, the time can be read on the numbered bezel. This was, and is still, the defining feature of a dive watch.
The essential features of a dive watch…