Discuss

Read

Blancpain Revisits the Fifty Fathoms

written by A.Morgan - 26th Oct 2011

It’s common knowledge that dive computers have made dive watches obsolete. The myriad of additional features that a dive computer has over its mechanical grandfather leaves only the nostalgic enthusiast yearning for the spring-powered option – any other modern diver would pick the computer without a second thought.

Well, Blancpain, credited with making the first modern dive watch, thinks differently. Whether it was the result of a technological bet or a heated argument, the X-Fathoms is here, and it’s packed with a spec list longer than an optician’s.

First, the basics; the case is big, at 55.65mm, sealed to three hundred metres and made of titanium to take out some of the weight. This may seem too large for a daily wearer, but the size is definitely at home with the average dive computer, and it needs to be to fit the mass of features that Blancpain have managed to squeeze into it. Power comes from three barrels with a five day reserve (that’s a long dive!) and is charged automatically. As with any serious dive watch, a helium decompression valve takes care of changing pressures.

Sounds fairly run-of-the-mill, doesn’t it? You may have noticed that the dial isn’t as plain as the original Fifty Fathoms, but each hand, number and gauge has been allocated to perform a different function for the diver wearing it. It all revolves around a small piece of amorphous metal barely a millimetre thick that resides under the honeycomb radioactive symbol adorning the case back (the radioactive symbol harks back to the logo used to differentiate civilian spec watches that didn’t use the radioactive paint).

This metal changes shape as the water pressure rises, and is accurate to within 30cm. This then corresponds to the blue-tipped 0-15m depth hand, the orange-tipped 0-90m depth and the black maximum recorded depth hand (which is reset using the locked down pusher at eight o’clock). Not only will it tell you how far down you’ve gone, but it also has a retrograde five minute countdown timer for timing decompression stops when coming back up again. It even has a rubber strap moulded like a cuttlefish to draw water under the case and into the membrane.

So if you love mechanical watches, but need the extra functionality of a dive computer (or if you don’t like the idea of mixing electricity and water) then now you can have your cake and eat it. This is Blancpain at its best, showing us that it can still meet the needs of contemporary divers today like it did in 1953 with the revolutionary Fifty Fathoms. Failing that, you can always use it to see how deep your bath is…