Credits: Article and images by Sergio Galanti @ Quill & Pad. See the original article here - https://quillandpad.com/2024/04/08/history-of-divers-watches-voyage-to-the-bottom-of-the-ocean/
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The Oyster watch was publicized in the London’s Daily Mail newspaper with a photo of British swimmer Mercedes Gleitze wearing the Oyster watch around her neck, as she crossed the English Channel in 1927.
In 1931, Rolex introduced the self-winding movement (Oyster Perpetual), a very important development because it removed the need to daily activate the crown to wind the watch.
This innovation reduced the risk of water and dust infiltration and improved the longevity of the watch’s internal mechanisms.
The ad in the Daily Mail presented the Rolex Oyster as a watch that met the definition of water resistance at the time: thus resistant to a depth of only a few meters. The original Rolex Oyster and the watches that came before it were never designed to be diver’s watches.
But this changed in 1932, when Omega presented to the world the first wristwatch tested and qualified for diving, not simply waterproof, by the Swiss watchmaking laboratory in Neuchatel. The watch was called the “Marine” and was certified water-resistant to 135 meters.
Unlike the many waterproof solutions adopted earlier, the Marine featured a cork-sealed double case, had a sapphire crystal, one of the first watches to do so at the time, and it used an adjustable strap with a diving extension. Prior to 1932, prototypes of the Omega Marine had been worn and approved by personalities such as Commander Yves le Prieur, the inventor of scuba diving. However, the Omega Marine was an expensive watch to produce and never became commercially viable, unlike the Rolex Oyster.
Birth of the divers’ watch
The decade of the 1950s was a period of scientific marine explorations, and great discoveries, in search of the boundaries of mankind’s knowledge of the underwater world. Jacques Cousteau’s excursions and his television documentaries increased the popularity of scuba diving. Leisure and commercial diving gave rise to organizations of professional and amateur divers, which increased the demand for watches designed for diving rather than for simple water resistance.
Vulcain, Breitling, Jaeger LeCoultre, DOXA, Squale, and Zodiac are just some of the brands that invested in the development of diver watches during this period. They developed new designs, tested innovative technical solutions, and created iconic watches that are still in high demand today as vintage models.
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Credits: Article and images by Sergio Galanti @ Quill & Pad. See the original article here - https://quillandpad.com/2024/04/08/history-of-divers-watches-voyage-to-the-bottom-of-the-ocean/