One of the essential pieces of gear for their divers was a timepiece. Since certain officers have expressed a desire to buy a watch of this type for their personal use, I would be grateful if you could inform me of the official price.Įarly in the 1950’s, two French naval officers, Captain Robert “Bob” Maloubier and Lieutenant Claude Riffaud, were charged with creating the French Combat diving corps. I attach considerable importance to the outer mobile crown which is very useful when diving. We found it 24 hours later in perfect condition and still running smoothly. The water resistance that we have tested to 100 metres is perfect, the operation is excellent and the luminosity matches requirements.ĭuring a dive, one of these watches was lost at a depth of 53 metres. I am delighted to inform you that I am very satisfied with this type of watch that we have been using for our diving exercises for the past year. I hereby confirm receipt of the “BLANCPAIN” no. They had no luck.Subject: “BLANCPAIN” Fifty Fathoms water-resistant watches A few years went by, and I had told my vintage watch dealer friends, Eric Wind and Jed Chevalier, to “keep their eyes open” as they travelled far and wide seeing much more than I could cover. I decided that, if one came my way at a reasonable price, I would buy it. Occasionally, I saw one on internet forums but I had never held one in my hand. I had seen a picture of one of these watches in a Japanese book about vintage dive watches. I’m sure that it was not a sales success. Style-wise, it was like nothing else made by Blancpain. It had a day and date calendar feature as well as red painted hands and a smoke-colored dial and roulette-style numbers on the internal bezel. It was completely smooth and streamlined externally, and even had two hidden crowns, one for rotating the internal bezel (which functioned like the large external bezel by indicating the start time of the dive) and one for winding and setting the time. Fiechter: the large rotating bezel with its prominent knurling for grip with wet hands caused expensive shirt sleeves to fray.Ĭouldn’t a watch be designed, which would function the same way, without this problem? The Blancpain company was, by the 70s, working with German military contractors on new designs - the Barakuda and the Bund, for example - and they designed Blancpain’s only internal bezel Fifty Fathoms watch. They all wore their specialized watches, even with evening wear or to business meetings. In fact, this had become a habit, and style, for divers. One reason for this was that the watch had an automatic movement so there was no reason to wind or set the time, thereby wearing out the stem/crown or compromising its waterproof double gaskets. Over the years, Jean-Jacques Fiechter’s wife had noticed that her husband wore his diving watch all the time, not just as a diving instrument for his brief diving excursions, but all day, and everyday. Its design remained, fundamentally, unchanged until the 1970s. The Fifty Fathoms was an enormous success, for many reasons besides the large size - which helped with underwater visibility - and rotating bezel. From that moment, the scuba diver wearing the watch would be able to see, at a glance, how many minutes had elapsed since he commenced his dive. The large diamond shaped indicator would be turned to the position of the minute hand on the watch. With this large rotating bezel, the watch could “memorize” the start of the dive. The most important use of a diving watch is to time the duration of your dive. One of the distinctive features of the Fifty Fathoms was a very large rotating external bezel marked with a large diamond-shaped indicator and minute markings at 15-30-45. The resulting Fifty Fathoms (300 ft.) watch was revolutionary and was immediately adopted by the French Navy (Marine Nationale) and a few years later by the US Navy as well. His company, Blancpain, made dress watches and ladies watches but Fiechter was an avid diver and he wanted something that he could use for diving that would suit his needs. In 1953, Jean-Jacques Fiechter created what is now considered the first modern dive watch.
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