The watches used by divers for over half a decade, dive watches are expertly crafted and valued by many in the watch collecting community. Below are 4 awesome subtypes of diver watches: 

 

1. Ultra Dive 

There is a class of diving watches that can go deeper than humans can go without help. A good diving watch can go 500+ meters below water, but this class of watches can go 1000+ meters below water. These watches go to depths humans without special gear couldn’t even attempt. This brings up the obvious question of why? What is the point of making such a watch? The companies that make these amazing watches do so to showcase that they can. It serves to prove the ability of the brand.

 

2. Explorer Watches 

Diving Watch History

The first style of diver watches was explorer watches. Custom made for each watch, these proto dive watches were more designed on an individual basis for each customer. As such, they were not what we would think of as diver watches. The explorer watch was made for the explorers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. 

 

3. Hard Hat Divers 

Another version of a proto diving watch was what hard hat divers used. These divers used big and bulky metal suits with a large metal head. These copper heads kept the water out much like a diving mask today. The divers would put pocket watches in the hard hat with them to keep track of time while they were diving. Not originally intended as a diving watch, these pocket watches nevertheless achieved the same purpose as the underwater watches of today.

 

4. The Luminous Effect 

The Italian navy is who we have to thank for the beautiful luminous diving watches that are available today. Following a request in 1935, Panerai created the first luminous diving watch. Eventually, after military use became less important the watch technology was added to the diving watches of Panerai.  

Recently we have been covering the history of different watch styles in our past few blogs, followed by a fun facts page as well. To check those blogs out click for our blog here.

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