70 YEARS OF UNDERWATER EXPERTISE
As it celebrates its 70th anniversary, the diving watch created at the height of underwater exploration is evolving by adopting a system that allows for the measurement of long periods of immersion.
In 1953, Blancpain created the first watch specially developed for the then booming underwater exploration. An indispensable tool for submarine thrill-seekers and deep-sea professionals, the Fifty Fathoms became a collection in its own right, with a variant called the Bathyscaphe that is better suited to civil life on land while maintaining its great technical qualities in terms of water-resistance and robustness. On the occasion of its 70th anniversary, it welcomes a new piece, the Fifty Fathoms Tech Gombessa, that supports dives to a depth of 300m and integrates a novel system specially developed to measure immersion times for a maximum of 3 hours.
This technical innovation, imagined back in 2018 and designed jointly by two experienced divers, Marc A. Hayek, Blancpain‘s CEO, and Laurent Ballesta, a French naturalist biologist and founder of the Gombessa project, is based on a coordination between the rounded black ceramic bezel graduated with time markers and a dedicated central hand that emit a green glow in the dark. The dial, dressed in pitch black, is punctuated with raised indexes and Arabic numerals and a pair of hands displaying the hours and minutes, all tinted in bright orange and diffusing a blue phosphorescence to easily dissociate the different informations. Fitted with a metal-lined rubber strap, the extremely resistant and light grade 23 titanium case measures 47mm in diameter and is 14.81mm thick. It is equipped with the 13P8 caliber, a mechanical movement with automatic winding that provides an extraordinary energy reserve of 120 hours (five days).
