A Brief History of Dive Watches
Written by Roy Kittrell, October 2024
For the last few years, I have hugely enjoyed diving with my Apple Watch Ultra; which gives all of my diving info on a bright colourful screen whenever I’m diving. While looking at the latest Titanium Milanese band for the Apple Watch Ultra though, I was surprised to read that it was based on older, analog diving watches. After looking at a few models, I went down a deep rabbit hole and decided to catalog my findings here!
There are no appointments underwater… and if you think you need to know what date it is, you might want to check you’re not dealing with Nitrogen Narcosis!
No, the first things divers needed from their watches by 1943 when Jacques Cousteau invented scuba diving, was to know how long they had been underwater for… but for watches to time dives, they first needed to make them waterproof at depth. 
1930’s to the 40’s: The first waterproof watches were becoming available to the general public. The Rolex Oyster and the Panerai Radiomir set the stage for what was to come. The Oyster was made in rust proof stainless steel, but also came in an equally rust proof gold version. The Radiomir, being developed for the Italian navy, featured luminescent dials allowing you to see the time moreclearly underwater. They were not rated for diving per se, but the ability to take your watch into the water was still novel at the time.
1950’s-1960’s: This decade saw many of the first modern dive watches. Suddenly not only were watches waterproof, manufacturers were beginning to think about how deep their customers might be going with them. Watches like the Blancpain Fifty Fathoms, worn by Hans Hass, The Omega Seamaster, worn by ‘Her Deepness’ Sylvia Earle, and the now iconic Rolex Submariner, worn by Jacques Cousteau himself, took 
dive watches to a whole new level. These luxury watches, like the Submariner would retail for approximately $15,000, so having the ability to calculate your nitrogen saturation was not cheap by any means! The depths they were able to reach were quite impressive too; the fifty fathoms (approximately 91 metres) was appropriately named, even though most of it’s users would never even consider reaching those depths. Indeed even today most of us (apart from Urve!) will never dare try.
On a side note… what a shame that we divers switched to metres and feet, when we could have been using Fathoms…! It would be so much cooler to be able to say ‘Oh my last dive was quite deep; almost 25 fathoms!’… alas.
An interesting feature appeared with the Rolex Submariner: the unidirectional rotating bezel. This amazing feature was crucial for dive safety, and I have seen a few friends with similar functions on their watch. The method is simple: when you first descend on a dive to the maximum depth on your dive, you take a note of the depth, and then you rotate the bezel so that the 0 marker is on the minute hand. When you are ready to ascend, you check how long you have been underwater on your watch by how far the minute hand has moved, and then you can safely plan your next dive with a dive chart… so simple!
The Omega Seamaster among other brands made a notable improvement around this time: the stainless steel mesh wrist strap. This tightly knit weave of metal, based on old designs for chainmail armour, worked well around both wrists and wetsuits, offering a surprisingly versatile band that worked both formally and functionally, and other brands would begin to offer as options for their watch ranges as well.
Another very interesting feature emerged with these diving watches. With the extreme depth ranges of the watches came extreme divers who took them to their limits; saturation diving done by maintenance workers required them to breathe a mix of oxygen and helium while they stayed in the living quarters at depths of up to 600m. This Heliox mix would seep inside the watch cases themselves, and when returning to the surface the gas expanded causing some of the watches to expel their crystals violently! To counter this; special helium valves were put into the sides to allow for safe gas expulsion when returning to the surface, and on many models even today these are added as a noteworthy feature.
1970’s-2000’s: Dive watches continued to become more robust, offering extreme ‘ultra-deep’ ratings beyond what any human could 
possibly endure, perhaps to showcase their ruggedness. Some watches like the Rolex Sea-Dweller even offered Helium escape valves, which supported saturation diving in the deep sea! Watches like the iconic Omega Seamaster 600 PloProf had unique locking bezels and a water resistance to a whopping 600m. Continued refinement with quartz movement for greater accuracy and materials like Titanium and Stainless Steel offered even more seawater resistant watches. An iconic watch, the Seiko SKX009, with it’s ’Pepsi’ red and blue bezel, was worn by Nuno Gomes on some of his deepest dives. The Pepsi Seiko is really geared for divers; with the red part of it’s bezel on the 20min mark, indicating to divers when they have likely hit their no deco time! Amazing.
Even James Bond got in on the action with the Omega Seamaster Professional 300m, showing that the only watches a discerning man would consider needed to go to at least to… let me check my calculations… 164 fathoms! (See? It IS cooler to use fathoms!)
Analog was beginning to give way to the digital era though. By the 80’s Casio released the first G-Shock watch, the DW-5000C which was not only waterproof but was found to withstand depths up to 200m. While researching this article, I was shocked to find that one of the most legendary divers, Shek Exley, was a huge fan of the Casio watches and regularly wore them on some of his most dangerous dives. In his book ‘Caverns measureless to man’ he recounted a dive so deep that some of his dive lights burst, but his Casio watch remained functioning!
The most amazing thing about these new digital dive watches? Their price! Some of the 200m rated Casios could be had for as little as $30; suddenly timing your dives and nitrogen levels was much more affordable and less of a luxury item. You could even say it was almost just an afterthought for these new watch makers.
2010’s to Present, and the invention of Dive Computers: While analog dive watches are still popular 
today as a fashion statement and as a historical keepsake, advancements in dive computers specifically for the sport have mostly rendered them to the sidelines. While various models of device (they could hardly be called dive computers at this stage) were available from the 70’s onwards to calculate nitrogen levels, none were very reliable until the 80s, with the introduction of Orca’s Decobrain, and Edge electronic dive computers. Another brand Suunto entered the arena with the SME-ML which was more reliable and compact.
Analog watches were not entirely forgotten yet though. In 2012 James Cameron dove in a submarine to the bottom of the Mariana Trench as part of the Deepsea Challenge expedition. Rolex created an experimental Deepsea Challenge watch which was mounted to the outside of the vessel for the duration of the dive. Even after going to a remarkable 12,000 metres on the arm of the robot, the watch survived and remained fully functional. It is quite a chunky boy at 17.7mm thick, weighs a hefty 220g and retails for an eye-watering $15,000 in most outlets.
By 2010; dive computers as a sport-specific device were hugely popular in the sport, even mandatory in most dive centres nowadays. They continued to advance, not only reporting nitrogen levels and dive time, but tracking depth changes and saturation for the user allowing for more precise diving. GPS functionality, LCD screens, Nitrox capable, Bluetooth enabled and even dive computers that could monitor your remaining air supply continue to come out and upstage each other.
On September 2022 however, Apple unveiled the latest addition to their Apple Watch line: The Ultra. Built for rugged outdoors pursuits, to my shock and delight it also included the ability to become a dive computer with a separate downloadable Oceanic+ app. While dive computers had largely taken the consumer away over the last few decades from the high-end watch market and towards uni-purpose devices for diving, Apple took us full circle, back to buying what are (arguably) designer watches again, that were also capable of accompanying users on their active lifestyles. The Oceanic+ app continued to build even more on the advancements of dive computers, now connecting dive information to a social network which other users could see. On a recent dive trip to Japan, I was able to use this information, collected by other divers, to determine the water temperature at different depths, allowing me to prepare the correct wetsuit ahead of time before going on the trip.
Pictured here is the latest model of Apple Watch Ultra 2, with the titanium mesh wrist band that was fittingly described as an homage to the earlier history of analog diving watches. I had initially bought this strap for myself as a more formal way to wear my Ultra around town and in my day to day life, but now I think it may be featuring on my next dive trip underwater selfie!
As to what the future holds for divers and their watches we can only guess… but one thing is for sure, divers not only want the latest and greatest tech on their wrist while diving, they want to look and feel good while they’re doing it!
It doesn’t matter if you are using a dive watch or dive computer, just as long as you are using them. So check out our range of dive computers that would suit you, and not to forget, use them on Flow’s dive trips! Just email or speak to Flow for more information!
Roy Kittrell is an avid naturalist and underwater photographer, featured here showing off both his underwater camera gear and his Apple Watch Ultra. His work can be found on instagram @roythedivebro