Welcome back to SwissWatchExpo's Taking Time. I'm Jonathan. This is Richard. So
we're doing something very controversial and awesome at the same time. One of our favorite
types of watches, dive watches.
So we're going over dive watches today.
What are they? Well, what are they? Well they're a tool watch that a lot of people use to scuba
dive and nowadays, most people aren't using it to scuba dive. Most people were just wearing it as a
general, general wear and tear watch, right? But these aren't applicable use a machine. You know,
they are built specifically designed to do a, do a purpose and they're there. And nowadays
they're significantly more powerful than it used to be. You know, it ranges all the way from,
you know, in the early 1900s from the very first water resistant watch all the way up
to what we have now, which is you know, kind of the pinnacle, which is the James Cameron Deep Sea.
And we'll talk a little bit about, we'll get a little more into that, but so,
you know, I guess we, you know, let's start by getting into the features of the watch.
I just want to say for the viewers, you know, this is a very subjective analysis. There's, there's
obviously some other components that would go into this, but we've. We're not clearly experts,
but we've, we've picked out five things that we kind of feel are the quintessential elements to a
dive piece. And so we've kind of picked out the pieces that we have as well, and that kind of
know embody those things as well. So again, it's very subjective, you know,
we know that there's, there's different opinions of this. Like Jonathan has said,
this is very controversial. Oh, and that brings up a good point.
I do want to prove a point here. You know, a dive watch is not afraid to get wet, right. So I wear
a dive watch where a Tudor Black Bay in steel. So the watch isn't afraid, but are, you? No!
So anyways, let's do a quick rundown I think we're going to do like the different features
and everything. So let's start with, I guess, the crown. Okay.
So I mean, from what I understand is that, you know, the crown kind of the quintessential
dive watch that we see now has a screw down crown there's, other there's obviously other,
other elements people have used to make a watch water resistant, but you know, it kind of started
with the screw down crown and the screw down case which happened in 1926 or so with Rolex, with the
oyster case you know, the idea that the case back screws down in the crown screws down as well.
Rolex didn't own that patent at the beginning. He, he actually borrowed the Hahn's Waldorf
borrowed that from someone else, but, you know, that kind of came with the original Oyster case
which kind of evolved into the submariner nowadays. But, you know, that's, that's kind
of where it started. And now what you see is most of the time with pieces that are considered to be
dive pieces, have a screw down crown. Yeah. You know, there's obviously some exceptions,
The hallmark of like one of the requirements is having a screw-down crown. What do we mean
by screw on crown is that you actually unscrew it counter-clockwise and left loose very tiny.
It does create a seal against the actual case.
Right. And it's got a, it's got a rubber gasket in there to seal it against the case cause obviously
metal and metal doesn't seal very well by itself. So, you know, those improvements have happened
over the, over the ages with different variations and as technologies improved
and so forth and so on. Then we kind of go to the, the thicker crystal. I think that's kind
of like the next component that we kind of see as the being that's the second quintessential
component of the dive watch. I think omega was the one that kind of like pioneered that with the
Omega Marine. So really cool watch. I wish they would come out. Yeah. And hopefully the
tech team will cut and put a picture on it. I don't know if they can,
they're probably going to, they're probably could just plaster, a big
Omega Marine right in front of our face. So everybody can see what we're talking about.
I had a double plexiglass crystal. And we don't have, obviously the watch here. I can't imagine
how much they'd be worth. But anyways, so our best representation of an overbuilt robust version of
that is the Omega Ploprof, which is really cool because it has, you know, also another engineered
feat, which is a locking bezel. So this will not turn without this button pushed. So it does turn
you know, which is another feature of the dive watch that makes it, it I've watched as the bezel.
Right. And you know, the F the original ones didn't have anything. They didn't have
any bezels at all. They didn't have any time capabilities. In fact, they didn't even have
any way for you to really see the watch when it went underwater in the first few were actually
kind of untested. Even the Rolex. The very first Rolex Submarine was kind of untested.
It was tested a little bit when I'm going to mess up her name, her name is Mercedes.
Her name was Mercedes. If you guys know her name, last name, it feel free to put
it down in the comments. I forgot her name, but she swam across the
English channel. And Hans Wilsdorf... It was where Rolex secured being water resistant.
Teaching us, again, it's not what, you know, it's who you know. Rolex keeps repeating this. So you
know, so he had the wherewithal to tell her to put it on a wrist, she swam across things,
channel 10 miles, and then, you know, the watch had perfect time and never got water in it. So
it turned out to be a very quintessential piece, but it wasn't proven to be a dive watch yet.
And the Omega was the first one that actually did prove to go underneath the water.
But it wasn't a dive watch. More like a JLC Reverso.
Exactly, it looked very similar and, you know, it went down 73 meters, if I'm correct.
73 meters, I think is the official rating for the first one. So that one was tested,
but if you did go down that deep, you couldn't really see it. So the point of technology
that we kind of see to be the quintessential element of dive watches is the illumination.
That goes with Panerai. We didn't have a good interpretation of Radiomir because they don't
use radium anymore. And that's where the line Radiomir actually kind of gets its name from.
It was really the first brand to really use purposely radium, which is actually a very
dangerous radioactive material. While you do your research, the radium girls,
horrible, horrible, tragic you know, circumstance that happened,
but, you know, radium was used and Panerai really contributed to the now evolved, dive watch,
you know, using luminescence. And radium was really like the first luminescence used, right.
And then, you know, in later years, the technology improved, they stopped trying to,
you know, they stopped hurting people and then they try, they, they changed the tritium,
but it is, it is notable to say that Luminor, I mean, Panerai, was the first luminescent watch
that you could see under water, if you went any significant depth. And, you know, it,
it also like merits to say that a lot of the developments and these pieces,
especially coming from the Panerai came from sort of the military use of the dive watch and
the frog men that you guys can do, your research, that we can do an entire video on, on just how
that kind of work, but it was built for the Italian military. So they built the Radiomir,
not this one, they built the Radiomir specifically for that for that purpose.
And the other thing that you know, kind of what we're talking about, the screw down crown,
the other thing that I did that was really, really neat was they created this locking
mechanism for the crown. And so it's a little bit different than the screw-down crown, but
it's still significant because it is a different design and other people have used it before,
like Hublot's used a similar situation where they lock it down with a lever versus a crown.
So, you know, other people have kind of picked up on that and and held it to their own as well. And,
you know, I, I'm kind of curious cause it looks like they actually, they implemented this in the
1950 Luminor yeah. That's what that's where kind of get his name. That's why we still call it the
1950. But now our piece is still say "patented" on the crown sometimes, and we don't know why.
Feel free to put it down in the comments we didn't get that information prior to making
the video. But if you guys know, please feel free to let us know. Cause we are
kind of curious about that because it's been, it's been patent since 1956 and it could be,
you know, America's patents and after, anyway, whatever you guys tell us,
what what'd you guys think about that? Because we're very curious to know.
So speaking of military use you know, Blancpain, really came out with like the first true
version of what it is. I'd watch it like a model of what everybody's kind of using nowadays,
Right? Yeah, yeah, with the Fifty Fathoms. So this isn't like the true Fifty Fathoms or anything,
but it is a chronograph, but it does have essentially like everything that, you know,
a dive watch would have. I mean, it has the uni directional bezel. And this was the first
implementation of the unidirectional bezel, I believe. So that's, that's actually our,
our fourth component as far as the dive watch you know, having that for, we forgot
to introduce that, but that is the fourth component, you know? The unidirectional bezel.
But yeah, this is essentially like what a dive watch has evolved and is sticking to today,
you know, it's really just a classic design and I mean,
there's just something about dive watch. That's just, you know, it's masculine it's,
beefy, bold, heavy, strong. It's just got the weight of a substantial piece.
And then Blancpain also did do a few variations for different military units.
Rolex provided some Submariners, you ever heard of the Milsub - very
sought after piece. I would love to give my right arm for a Milsub. Just like your watch, right?
Essentially, dive watches have had since Blancpain, really kind of like came out with the
overall design, a big influence in history going forward. And haven't really changed a whole lot.
Still like a crocodile.
Definitely, you know, Fifty Fathoms was originally able. It was rated at 300 meters.
Yeah. One Fathom was six feet. If you multiply that by 30 to get 300 or 300 feet. So 100 meters
when it originally came out now obviously we've surpassed that at this point, but there's still
kind of pay homage to the original piece and call it the Fifty Fathoms. But obviously this can go
significantly deeper than that. But then from there, I think, you know, we kind of evolved a
little bit further because you know, going that far is one thing, but we've completely kind of
surpassed what the, the watches of the ages have done, which leads us kind of to the James Cameron.
Yeah. James Cameron. Yeah. So this piece has really kind of like the quintessential
hallmark of essentially what all the technology has kinda built up to. This piece actually was
strapped to, I think, one of the arms or some aspect of the Submersible that James Cameron
actually took down. James Cameron is a director, producer. I think he made Terminator II, Avatar,
and this is named after him because he gave away his Submariner that he wore for like 20 years.
And Rolex heard about that and wanting to get with him to do this, to really
show off again, you know, like Mercedes, when we crossed the channel, you know,
they really wanted to show that their pieces are not just for show, they're tool watches. So,
they actually strapped you know, the watch, they didn't overbuild it. They didn't super
pressurize it or anything like that. They literally strapped it to the Submersible
and took it down to 11,000 feet with it still running, came back up and it was still running.
Significantly farther than 100 meters of the Blancpain, and everything before this one,
this one implemented what we considered to be like the fifth quintessential component of a true dive
watch. Not every dive watch has this, but if you're going, if you're going to get extreme,
then essentially you're going to have to have the helium escape valve, which we see on the side of
the case. Omega originally when they started doing their helium escape valve was a manual release
and they kind of, they still stick to that as a sort of the heritage in an homage to
the original traditional pieces as well. But a lot of these cases we're seeing now they
have the helium escape valve, which is automated, essentially automates the helium escape process.
Well, you know, why was well essentially, saturation divers go down for extended periods.
You know, they go down for like a week, sometimes more. And whenever they're in there, what what's
called like a diving bell, it's actually gonna be like filled with helium and they have to breathe
like a helium oxygen mixture. Right. So whenever they come back up and repressurize helium is
lighter than air, so it has to escape somehow. So the crystals were actually popping off of like the
Submariners and Rolex came out with the helium escape valve to actually let the helium escape.
Learn something new today. Yeah. Thanks for that, man. All right. So let's kind of like,
you know, that's, that's sort of the end of our brief overview with the dive watches and we're
going to kind of do what we sort of do at the end of all of our videos. And if you had to pick one,
what's your favorite?
You know, I think, you know, we're going to actually go bold this time -- Omega Ploprof.
Like it's, it's awesome. First shark proof watch, too.
So you know, this thing's going to be able to actually -- you might lose a hand,
but the watch will be fine. Yeah. If I lose my right arm.
What about you? I think you know, I think I'm going to go with the Blancpain. I think
it is. It's got, it's got a mixture of elegance mixed with utilitarian use and just, I love the,
I love the bezel. This is different than any, a lot of the stuff you're seeing nowadays,
you see the ceramic bezels and I just, I really liked the way this was done. I like how dressy it
is. You can wear this with any suit. If you wanted to, to be honest with you, I mean, you can wear it
for any party and no one's going to be mad at you for wearing it in shorts and slippers or sandals.
Maybe a suit on top. You went out to the front porch and getting the newspaper and slippers.
So I think I'm gonna go with the Blancpain.
That's it for us. You guys let us know. What's your favorite? You know,
tell us what you thought about it. Tell us what you think about dive washes -- if you guys own it,
if you guys use it in the dive, you know, if you guys are just using it for fun recreation, do you
guys use the pool? You know, get back and talk to us and leave "Penny" down in the comments
because we still want Penny to come on here one of these days. So Penny on the comments, if you want
Penny to show up one of these days, she's sort of like our unicorn, that's all from us. All right.