Dive Watches

An advanced ‘thank you’ to Esquire‘s Big Black Book for these fun facts….

• the 1926 Rolex Oyster is generally considered the first water-resistant watch
• the Oyster also introduced the screw-down crown and a screw-in winding arm that sealed out water
• blue is the most visible color underwater (as it’s the last part of the color spectrum to be absorbed)
• diving watches used to be radioactive because they used radium and tritium!
• NO watch is waterproof and, at one point, it was illegal to use that designation ~ now it’s about water-resistance!
• newer diving watches have escape valves because you can go deeper and you don’t want pressure to build up and bust your watch
• Blancpain released Fifty Fathoms, its first dive watch, in 1953 and was named in recognition of the 50 fathoms – or 91 meters- that was the widely accepted depth at which a person could free-dive. Now it’s 121 meters!
• The IOS creates standards by which watches can deem themselves water resistant ~ at a minimum, a dive watch should be resistant up to 100 meters below the surface

Luminescence is ruling right now!

My favorite right now is the Timex Intelligent Quartz Depth Gauge Dive Watch ($225) – BTW, it was voted as one of the seven best dive watches (along with the likes of Omega and Girard-Perregaux)!