ISO 6425, the international standard that spells out the guidelines for diving watches replica, states that for a timepiece to be suitable for diving it must have a rated water resistance of at least 100 meters. Considering that the maximum depth to which the Professional Association of Diving Instructors trains students for Open Water certification is a mere 18 meters, this seems like a suitable safety margin. Yet watch companies continue to push ever deeper with water resistance ratings, a race for the bottom that has been going on since the birth of the diving watch.
The era of the diving watch, most experts agree, began in 1953, just eight years after the self-contained underwater breathing apparatus, the Aqua-Lung, was patented by Jacques Cousteau and Émile Gagnan. Water resistant timepieces that could track elapsed time underwater first appeared at the Basel Watch Fair of that year.
The first of this new breed were the Blancpain Fifty Fathoms and the Zodiac Sea Wolf. The Sea Wolf was rated for an impressive 20 atmospheres of pressure (especially water tested, the caseback proudly proclaimed), the equivalent of roughly 200 meters of depth, well beyond the depths anyone was diving at the time. And the Blancpain was called the Fifty Fathoms because that more poetically named depth, which is roughly equivalent to 300 feet, was considered the absolute limit of what was considered possible to dive.
My, how times have changed.
Overkill?
In 1968, Zodiac released the successor to the Sea Wolf, appropriately dubbed the Super Sea Wolf, a new dive watch rated to 750 meters of depth, astounding at the time. And today, the Fifty Fathoms is still a name in the Blancpain catalog, but the watch is rated to a healthier 300 meters, which may sound impressive, but consider that Blancpain now builds an even bigger watch called the 500 Fathoms that is rated for a pressure of 100 bar, or 1,000 meters. Considering that the current world record for the deepest scuba dive is 300 meters, it makes one wonder why are watch companies building in such overkill? The answer is, because they can.
Watchmaking is, at its core, engineering. Sure, there’s great skill and artistry but, at heart, watchmakers are tinkerers, always looking for ways to improve things, whether it’s in pursuit of better accuracy, a faster date change or a better way to keep a watch movement protected. In the earliest days, watches replica were vulnerable to the elements-dust and moisture-a problem that plagued watchmakers.
The earliest attempts to protect a watch from the environment involved sealing the entire case inside an outer shell that slid shut over the watch. The early Ermeto from Movado and the Omega Marine were two examples of this method.
But in the 1920s, Rolex invented the Oyster case, which revolutionized the industry. By screwing on the caseback compressing a rubber gasket, and adding a screw-in sealed crown, the watch became impervious to water, a feature Rolex proved by hanging an Oyster-cased watch around the neck of swimmer Mercedes Gleitze and sending her into the English Channel. Thus would begin a long relationship between Rolex and the sea, as well as its use of aquatic adventurers to prove out its technologies.
The first diving watch from Rolex, the Submariner of 1953, was water resistant to 100 meters, which would interestingly still be compliant with ISO 6425 today. But by the 1960s, even the new and improved 200-meter rated Submariner wasn’t good enough for the commercial divers laying oil pipeline in the North Sea. So Rolex beefed up the Submariner, doubling its water resistance with a thicker case and crystal. It had French commercial diving firm COMEX test this new watch-the Sea-Dweller-for pressure resistance, something Rolex still does to this day with its deep diving watches replica.
Today, the Rolex Sea-Dweller 4000 is rated to an abyssal 1,220 meters while its Deepsea Sea-Dweller goes even deeper, rated to 3,900 meters. Not one to be bettered, Rolex built a special version of this watch and strapped it to adventurer James Cameron’s submarine for a trip to the deepest spot on the planet, the Marianas Trench, at 35,000 feet deep, a feat that literally cannot be outdone, at least on this planet.
The great irony, and one that gives luxury watch owners pause before they dip a toe, or a wrist, in the sea, is that the key to keeping a $10,000 watch dry and safe is a ten cent rubber gasket. Watch companies will stress that owners of even the beefiest leviathans should have them checked and their gaskets changed annually, lest saltwater creep in and turn that finely tuned mechanical heart into a rusted hunk of metal. Of course if you, like so many other desk divers and nervous watch owners, take off your Fifty Fathoms before jumping in the deep end, there’s little reason to worry. But then again, better safe than sorry.