![]() His methods caught on, and soon there were 196 people employed at his factory. But Jones had in mind something different - an American-style factory where the watches would be designed and assembled in keeping with the old Swiss ways. Watchmakers still plied their trades by their own firesides, as they had done for centuries. Though the Industrial Revolution had swept through America, in Switzerland the situation was very different. When an American watchmaker named Florentine Ariosto Jones arrived in Schaffhausen, Switzerland in 1868, he found a city almost frozen in time. Paired to a black rubber strap with a stainless steel pin buckle and accompanied by its factory goodies, it’s a watch whose design continues to inform the current Aquatimer collection, accompanying a new generation of divers into the water. Powering this Aquatimer is the workhorse Valjoux 7750 automatic movement with roughly 48 hours of power reserve. Housed in a 46mm stainless steel case with a sapphire crystal, a signed crown, barrel pushers, and a unidirectional black and yellow dive bezel, it features a luminous, matte black dial with applied indices, a white and yellow modified ‘sword’ handset, a triple-register chronograph layout with silver and and black subdials, and a day-date display at 3 o’clock. ![]() This particular IWC dive watch is a more contemporary offering, an Aquatimer Reference IW376702 chronograph from the 2010s. All in all, the pilot’s watch-focused company has had quite an impact on the design of undersea timekeepers. Their compressor-cased Aqautimers from the late 1960s have since become collectible classics, while the Ocean 2000 designed with none other than Ferdinand Porsche was one of the first titanium-cased divers. When one thinks of a dive watch, IWC isn’t a brand that springs immediately to mind.ĭespite other companies taking the lead in the dive watch race, however, the Schaffhausen-based firm has contributed significantly to the aquatic scene.
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