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My old man had a Blancpain Aqualung in the 60s and 70s. Early 70s, he lost the watch: it fell overboard during a shakedown cruise on North Sea... Just an old watch... He bought a modern Seiko and never looked back :shock:
Menno
considering that with a lot of watch hype nowadays people wear all sorts of crap on their wrists in any occasion, like suunto's with suits,
I'm thinking maybe some time ago, like up until the 70's people who had more watches of different kinds would use their divers to go in the water but would not wear them elsewhere.
I mean, bond himself looked pretty daft with a sub+nato combo on his tux, for how cool we may think that is today, at the time it may have been seen as a bit of a thug type ting to wear. then again, he was a bit of a thug spy character, resorting to improvised knucklebusterwatches.
is anybody old enough to remember how divers were worn and felt back in those days?
I am not :shock:
My old man had a Blancpain Aqualung in the 60s and 70s. Early 70s, he lost the watch: it fell overboard during a shakedown cruise on North Sea... Just an old watch... He bought a modern Seiko and never looked back :shock:
Menno
Very shocking indeed!Originally Posted by thieuster
My dad had a Seiko mechanical diver in those days, he used that for swimming/sporting activities. When he was working he had a simple dressy Seiko5 of sorts on his wrist.
Daddel.
Got a new watch, divers watch it is, had to drown the bastard to get it!
Hi Bubi, the below is my first dive watch and yes I actually wore it on Navy diving operations in 1979 on a seiko rubber, still going strong. It had a service in 1986, new bezel insert and mineral glass, light polish as original was well beaten up. Regards. Kev
I had a diver-style boy's Timex watch when I was at primary school in the 1970's! It looked the part but it steamed up and stopped on rainy days and the (plastic) bezel fell off at some stage...
I had a Mondaine divers watch in the late sixties early seventies. Auto, on a rubber strap loved that watch as I did a bit of sub aqua back in the dya. The watch died in a motorcycle accident in the mid seventies when the spring bars gave after hitting a (parked) transit van and shooting off and shattering on the road.
Shame.
Neat Seiko!
Hi Bubi, the below is my first dive watch and yes I actually wore it on Navy diving operations in 1979 on a seiko rubber, still going strong. It had a service in 1986, new bezel insert and mineral glass, light polish as original was well beaten up. Regards. Kev
I like the thought that my 300, which was first sold in Venezuela (according to the Omega certificate) was bought by someone who was working as a diver for an offshore company in that region (or was in the Jacques Cousteau team :D) and that the dent in the bezel actually was formed while diving. But this is just me being romantic. I have no idea if people bought a dive watch as a fashion item or as a gadget (300 meters was pretty awesome in those days)… Good question, I’m really curious!
in the very early 80s my Dad was FD for a commercial diving company in Singapore,
the Divers i recall seemed to either wear Seiko or Rolex for work, but all wore Rolex for the evening, most wore a gold Rolex for nights out (which was every shore day it seemed)
my weekend "treat" was usually a bit of stock-taking or giving the decom chamber a clean....
as a 10 year old seeing somewhat larger than life commercial divers wearing those type of watches was pretty emotive when it came to getting a Rolex myself one-day.
but it was odd that everytime I tried on a Sub it looked too small, like wagon wheels or Monster Munch I guess, as I grew everything shrunk!!
finally found the DSSD was the size of watch I remembered, guess I grew bigger than those BIG men
Not sure when the wheel of fashion turned and stainless steel/tool watches became the watch style to have. The 70's as I remember were large (for the time, now pretty average) cases cushion, square or just plain odd in various colour combos. The Omega cone took a bow, TV dials came in and a cheap easy way to look something like that was via the cheap diver style route. Actually getting them wet was a disaster. Yes I did accept the sales blurb as accurate and drowned a watch. Before that dress watches seemed to be the thing to wear.
In the 60s i used to wear a bog standard Seko same as i wear now never had one let me down
Diver's watches were always popular. I remember about a third of the watches and the Five and Dime were "Diver's Style".
I think back then if you needed a good water-proof watch, you got yourself a diver. That is if you could afford a 100 meter rated Explorer....
I remember being on board the boat of friend of my uncle, Geoff. He and my uncle would dive for crayfish and lobsters in North Wales, and I sometimes got to join them. Geoff was a successful property developer/builder and apart from the 33' boat, drove a 5 Series BMW and sported a gold Rolex Submariner. So, yes, he was a diver, and yes he wore a diving watch....but only untill he was ready to get in the water, when he took it off, hung it over the throttle lever on the boat, and strapped on a decompression meter.
Bought a Seiko 6309 in 1978 as I'd had just had my, only other watch at the time, a Citizen automatic, "serviced" for the 3rd or 4th time because I'd forgotten to take it off before a bath/shower, washing dishes, or in the worst case, a dip in the deep end of a pool when a bunch of us teenagers were rough-housing and I got thrown in (along with my wallet which had several ID cards, that in that day were still printed on cardstock - what a mess). I figured I'd never have to worry about those problems again. BUT, I got many comments/questions on why I was wearing such a big watch. I wish now I had just said I was setting a fashion trend. Instead I usually gave the long explanation about being thrown into the pool.
.
You are talking more about the '60s than the '70s. By the '70s (especially late '70s) big watches (divers and chronos) were quite popular in London circles.
john
"The whole purpose of mechanical watches is to be impertinent." ~ Lionel a Marca, CEO of Breguet
I wore a diver's watch from about 1967 to 1976, but have never dived. Just liked the style. 8)
In the early 1960s Exchange & Mart was chokka with enormous watches with 'rotating bezels' (whatever they might be) from about 39/11d (£2 to you) upwards. There were also Jaegers and other military watches too for what now seems not much more. :cry:
A kid at my school bought one of the £2 ones and was the subject of fun for a whole term - 'never got home from school as the weight of it forced him to walk in circles' etc., and 'Make us a cup of tea with your watch, Pete'.
Oh, how we laughed, such japes Pip.
I had a boy's diver's watch as a kid in the early '70s, with a sub-like bezel in blue. Loved that watch. I did wear it in the swimming pool and in the sea, but I wore it all the time.
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