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I started this page in December 2011 and it is still under construction. Until this sign is removed it will change almost daily, and certainly weekly, so if you want to keep up with it as it develops, please bookmark it and check back regularly.

The Development of the Waterproof Watch

I have titled this page the "development" rather than "invention" of the waterproof watch because, like the wrist watch, I am not sure that a waterproof watch is something that needed to be invented. When the watch was invented it was obvious that the mechanism needed to be encased to be safely carried about, and it would have pretty soon become clear that protection from dust would be an advantage to keep it running for longer periods, and that if it was carried outdoors, then protection from moisture would also be a good idea to prevent the mechanism from rusting. So gradually watch cases were improved to seal better against dust and moisture.

This improvement was at first gradual as watches could only be afforded by the very wealthy who did not care to get grubby and wet, but as the watch became to be a necessity for the common man, particularly after the coming of the railways in the nineteenth century, the pace of innovation quickened. There was always a balance to be struck against the degree of protection afforded to the movement and the inconvenience caused to the wearer, so the development of the practical waterproof watch took place over many years in a series of stages.

If you have any comments, corrections, requests or suggestions, then please feel free to email them to me at . You shouldn't need to copy the email address, just click on it. I answer all emails I receive, so if you do write to me and don't get an answer in a few days, please check your junk and spam folders. Even better, when you write, add my email address to your contacts and my emails will not be filtered out. I look forward to hearing from you! Regards - David

W. Pettit & Co. & Mr. Trappett

The earliest evidence which I have found of a truly waterproof watch is this report of a watch exhibited at the Great Exhibition in London in 1851. The watch by W. Pettit & Co. of 2 Crombie's Row, Commercial Road East, London was exhibited performing suspended in a glass globe filled with water and, according to the "Official Descriptive and Illustrated Catalogue of the Great Exhibition", surrounded with gold and silver fish.

In the Catalogue Pettit & Co. are described as "Inventors" and it is stated that "The object of the invention is to secure the protection of time-keeping and other instruments from water, sea damp, rust &c." (emphasis added).

The Illustrated London News, in a supplement actually printed in The Great Exhibition, stated "Messrs. Pettit and Trappett exhibit a silver watch, which is suspended in a globe filled with water. The object of the invention, the exhibitors say, is to secure the works from sea water, &c." This raises the likelihood that Trappett was the inventor, and that he approached Pettits to manufacture his invention. I am searching to see if either party patented the invention.

Stem winding and setting

At first, watches were wound and set by key, that is the owner had to open the back of the watch and use a key to wind the mainspring and set the hands to the correct time. The holes through which the key was introduced into the movement were easy entry points for dust and moisture. In 1845 Adrien Philippe of Patek Philippe invented keyless winding and setting by a stem and crown. The crown was turned to wind the watch, and pulled out to set the hands. Although intended to make the watch self-contained and easier to use, a watch without holes for a key was already better protected against dust and moisture, and there were various ways the stem could be sealed resulting in the waterproof watch. So the invention of keyless stem winding and setting was an important step in the development of the practical waterproof watch.

Aaron Lufkin Dennison

In 1872 Aaron Lufkin Dennison secured British patent No. 356. This was for "Improvements in Watches and Pocket Chronometers" consisting of constructing the parts of watches and chronometers so that they "are simplified and perfected, and the cases made air and water tight."

To make the case air and water tight, Dennison dispensed with the hinges for the bezel and back, and made the bezel and back screw down onto the middle part of the case. The winding stem and push piece for engaging the hand setting mechanism were made to pass through packings or gaskets so that they too were water tight.

Explorers Watches

In the latter part of the 19th century, the needs of explorers and travellers to lands with extreme, in particular humid or damp, climates give rise to a class of hermeticlly sealed watches now often called explorers watches. These watches had their backs and bezels screwed onto the middle part of the case, sealed by leather gaskets set into grooves. A cap enclosing the the crown was screw threaded onto the end of the pendant to seal the gap where the stem enters the case, again with a leather washer for sealing.

Marine chronometers were not suitable for this type of work because the chronometer escapement is extremely fragile and not suitable for rough treatment. Explorers watches used English lever escapements, which were capable of good timekeeping, not quite as good as a chronometer escapement, but much more robust.

The pictures here by kind permission of Pieces of Time in Mayfair, London, (www.antique-watch.com) are of one of these watches, you can find more details about it in their sold archive here: Silver Explorer's Watch. The watch has a keyless fusee English lever movement with up / down indication on the dial. It is stem wound and key set, that is the crown is used only to wind the watch: to set the hands the back must be unscrewed and removed to gain access to a square boss on the central minute arbor. It was owned at one time by Vice Admiral A. W. Craig of the Royal Navy.

Although the stem wind and set mechanism, doing away completely with the need to use a separate key to wind a watch and set the hands, had been invented by Adrien Philippe of Patek Philippe in 1845, there was a reason for retaining key set for the hands of these watches. It was to avoid the time being re-set inadvertently. Watches like these and marine chronometers, which were used for determining longitude, were not adjusted to local time or to compensate for errors in time keeping. Before setting out they were carefully "rated" In strictly horological terms, "rating" a chronometer means that prior to the instrument entering service, the average rate of gaining or losing per day is observed and recorded on a rating certificate which accompanies the instrument. This daily rate is used in the field to correct the time indicated by the instrument to get an accurate time reading. Even the best made chronometer with the finest temperature compensation etc. exhibits two types of error, (1) random and (2) consistent. The quality of design and manufacture of the instrument keeps the random errors small. In principle the consistent errors should be amenable to elimination by adjustment, but in practice it is not possible to make the adjustment so precisely that this error is completely eliminated, so the technique of rating is used. The rate will also change while the instrument is in service due to e.g. thickening of the oil, so on long expeditions the instrument's rate would be periodically checked against accurate time determined by astronomical observations.  to determine their mean daily error, and during the expedition this was used to calculate the true time. They were maintained set on the London time zone, and the difference between London (Greenwich) noon time and local mid-day, when the sun was at its highest, gave the longitude. Every 1 hour difference from Greenwich is equivalent to 15° of longitude.

The dial is signed "Lund & Blockley - To the Queen - 42 Pall Mall, London", with a serial number of 2/958. The silver case is hallmarked with London marks and the date letter for 1878/1879, a serial number corresponding to that on the movement, and the maker's mark "PW" for Phillip Woodman of Benjamin Woodman and Sons, first registered with the Goldsmiths Company London Assay Office on 29 June 1857 at 56 Great Sutton Street, Clerkenwell, London, then on 11 July 1871 recorded as having moved to 33 Smith Street, Northampton Square, Clerkenwell. Rather sensibly the cap is securely attached to the case by a silver chain - not pretty, but very functional. The back is engraved "A. W. Craig Royal Navy".

Royal Geographical Society

Between 1878 to 1929 some 40 watches were either purchased by or gifted to the Royal Geographical Society of Great Britain for use on expeditions to places where extreme climatic conditions were encontered, such as the tropics and the polar regions. Of these, 34 were waterproof explorer type, although interestingly the Society never refers to expeditionaries as explorers, but always as travellers, and these watches as travellers watches. Rather understandably, because they want to distinguish these watches from the more mundane travel clocks, most dealers and collectors refer to them with the rather more romantic name of "explorers watches".

The Society purchased most of its watches through one main supplier, Lund and Blockley, which in the spring of 1890 changed its name to Herbert Blockley & Co. The watches were made in Clerkenwell by the well known watch company Usher and Cole (one of the great watch companies of the time), eventually bought out by Camerer Cuss, another well known London watch company, in the 20th century.

One of these RGS watches was sold by sold Bogoff of San Francisco. You can see it at RGS Explorer's Watch. It is is virtually identical to the Admiral Craig watch illustrated above. Steve's watch has the same wording on the dial, with the serial number 2/951 indicating that it was made before but at around the same time as the watch in the pictures, and it has "Royal Geographical Society" and the number "5" engraved on the back, making it RGS No. 5.

Rather unusually, RGS No. 5 is key wound but stem set - the crown is only used to set the hands, the spring is wound by a key inserted through a hole in the back of the case. A screw-in plug seals the hole for the winding key. This is the opposite of the later explorers watches as discussed above. At first I thought this must be an error in the description, but I have looked again at the pictures and the position of the screw in cap on the case back does confirm that it is key wound. RGS No. 5 was an early watch, part of a batch ordered in 1878. These were made up from fairly ordinary movements, hence the stem set key wind, popular at the time, and the curious screw-in cover on the back which has to be opened every day. This design was obviously not ideal and was quickly dropped in favour of the later stem wound key set type, which continued almost unchanged until the late 1920s. The "Admiral Craig" Watch is amongst the earliest of this final version of the watch.

Two more explorers watches can be found on Steve Bogoff's site at Explorer's Watch and Lund & Blockley Explorer's Watch. David Penny also shows two explorers watches, one made by Fridlander hallmarked London 1890 and engraved on the back with "Royal Geographical Society RGS No. 21.", the other supplied by Herbert Blockley, made by Usher and Cole, hallmarked London 1893, casemaker again Phillip Woodman.

Not all explorers watches were commissioned by the Royal Geographical Society. There is no data for how many of this type of watch were produced, but the two mentioned above which have "Royal Geographical Society" together with a Royal Geographical Society serial number indicate how the Royal Geographical Society watches were identified. Explorer watches that don't bear the engraved Royal Geographical Society name and a serial number were not commissioned by the Royal Geographical Society. The two other explorers listed on Steve Bogoff's web site don't have the Royal Geographical Society name and a serial number, and the watch pictured here, as well as another explorers watch by Herbert Blockley of St James listed by Pieces of Time, are both similarly not engraved with the Royal Geographical Society name and a serial number. Following this logic, of the 6 pieces I have noted (2 by Pieces of Time, 3 by Steve Bogoff and 1 by David Penny), only two have the Royal Geographical Society name and a serial number. So I think the Royal Geographical Society series of 40 or so watches were a minority of this type of watch. An hermetically sealed watch of this type would certainly appeal to mariners for instance.

Thanks to Peter Burt, a member of the Royal Geographical Society, for much of the information here about the RGS and these watches. Peter is researching the Society's archives and writing a paper on the watches of the RGS, many of which have wonderful histories and entertaining stories to tell of the travellers who borrowed them [and mostly returned them].

Ezra Fitch

On April 22nd 1879 US patent number 214642 was granted to Ezra C. Fitch. The principal features of this patent are a case without an opening back, a screw on bezel, and a removable cap enclosing the crown. The cap enclosing the crown is of course essentially the same as the explorer's watch described above, which it appears came first, but whether Fitch conceived the idea without seeing an explorer's watch I don't know.

In the patent Fitch says that the bezel is formed with an internal screw thread which engages a corresponding thread formed on the case and as the bezel is screwed tightly down it forms a tight joint with the case which is "proof against the entrance of dust or moisture". Fitch envisages that a small groove may be turned in the face of the shoulder on the case to receive a packing ring to make the "tightness of the joint more secure and certain, if found necessary", and that the face of the bezel is formed with a milling around the edge as shown in Fig. 2, to give a grip to enable the bezel to be readily screwed on or off.

To seal the gap where the winding stem enters the case, Fitch provides a removable stem cap "D" which screws on the end of the pendant, the tube which carries the winding stem through the watch case, and encloses the end of the stem and the crown "k". Fitch notes that any method of attaching the cap to the pendant may be employed, but says that a screw thread is preferred because the cap can be screwed down tightly to meet a shoulder on the pendant forming a "perfectly tight joint". Fitch notes that a packing ring may also be used on the shoulder of the pendant, similar to that of the bezel, if found desirable.

This type watch with a detachable cap over the crown was called an "explorer's" watch because, although the detachable cap made it rather impractical for everyday use, its waterproof qualities made it valuable to explorers.

Ezra Fitch - screw down crown

In 1881 Ezra C. Fitch obtained a US patent on a development of this idea, using the watch crown itself as the cap. The image below shows some details from the patent. You can see that the crown is internally threaded and screws down onto the pendant, the base of the crown making a seal against the shoulder "e" on the pendant.

Fitch specified a left hand thread for the crown and pendant. The reason for this was to use the winding ratchet to enable the crown to be screwed down once the watch was fully wound. The user unscrews the crown in the direction of winding, and then winds the watch. When the watch is fully wound, the crown can no longer be rotated forward, and the left-hand thread allows it then to be screwed down backward onto the pendant. But this presents a problem. If the watch is fully wound and the crown screwed down and then the user notices that the hands need to be set to the correct time, he is in a pickle. The crown can't be unscrewed, because the spring is fully wound! He must wait until the watch has run down some before he can unscrew the crown to set the hands.

Ezra C. Fitch became president of the American Watch Company of Waltham in 1883, and watch cases with screw down crowns to his patent were produced in small numbers by the American Watch Company in the 1880s. The picture of one of these watches shown here was kindly given to me by Jerry Treiman. The design doesn't seem to have achieved great commercial or popular success, so perhaps the extra complication wasn't found to be necessary or worthwhile on a pocket watch by the watch-buying public.

Almon Twing

A few months after Fitch registered his screw down crown patent in 1881, another inventor, Almon Twing of Waltham, also registered a patent for a screw down crown. Twing's design was superior to Fitch's, incorporating a clutch into the crown and winding stem assembly so that when the crown being screwed or unscrewed on the pendant, it was free to turn relative to the stem, but when the crown was free of the pendant, the clutch engaged the crown with the stem so that the watch could be wound or set.

In the picture from the patent I have coloured the two parts of the clutch red and yellow, the red bar passing through the winding stem and the yellow yoke attached to the crown. Fig 5. shows the crown screwed down with the yoke clear of the red bar so the crown can turn freely with respect to the stem. In Fig the crown is unscrewed and sprung clear of the case and the red bar has dropped into the yoke, coupling the stem and crown rotationally. The crown and stem can then be rotated to wind the movement, or pulled out further to set the hands. Once the winding and hand setting is completed, the crown is pushed back towards the case against the pressure of the spring, disengaging the yellow yoke from the red bar. The crown can now be screwed down onto the case with a right hand thread, and because it is disengaged from the stem it can be unscrewed at any time to set the hands, even if the mainspring is fully wound. This kind of action will be very familiar to anyone with a modern watch which has a screw down crown.

This design of Twing's doesn't seem to have actually been produced, which is rather a shame because all the features which made the Rolex Oyster a success some 45 years later had been invented by 1891 - the screw back and bezel, and the screw down crown with a clutch, enabling it to be unscrewed at any time.

Alcide Droz & Fils

In 1883 Alcide Droz & Fils patented in Britain (UK patent 2624 26 May 1883), and in 1884 in the United States (US patent 307027 21 October 1884), a watch they called l'Imperméable (The Impermeable). This watch had a screw bezel and no opening back to the case, and a screw down crown virtually identical to the 1881 Fitch patent with left hand screw thread. Did Droz simply copy the Fitch patent? There is some strong evidence that they did, contained in the wording of the UK patent which bears a striking resemblance to that of Fitch's 1881 patent.

In his 1881 patent, Ezra Fitch describes winding a watch equipped with his screw down crown as follows: "To wind the watch, therefore, it is only necessary to unscrew the knob one or two turns, so as to allow the knob sufficient back play on the stem without bringing it to a seat on the shoulder, ... and the winding of the movement may then be accomplished with the usual back-and-forth rotation of the knob in as quick and easy a manner as with the usual stem-winding crown." Fitch is describing a way of winding a watch with his screw down crown which doesn't require the crown to be fully unscrewed from the pendant, or the stem as he calls it. Instead the crown is unscrewd just a turn or two, and then rotated back and forth on the screw threads. Why does Fitch describe the action of winding like this? The answer lies at the end of the sentence, the winding can be carried out "in as quick and easy a manner as with the usual stem-winding crown." Evidently Fitch was concerned that purchasers would be put off his invention because of the need to unscrew the crown in order to wind the watch, so he uses this description to show that there is very little extra effort involved. But the action of turning the crown while it is still engaged with the screw threads is a rather unnatural action, and would also lead to rapid wear of the threads, especially on a silver case, so this seems to be a rather contrived and unnatural statement, probably inserted in response to an adverse comment.

Contrast Fitch's description of winding a watch with his screw down crown this with a description of the same operation in the Droz 1883 UK patent: "In order to wind the Watch the said Crown or button is turned about once round to the right so as to loosen it then by moving it from left to right and back again the Watch can be wound as usual." Although shorter, it is essentially the same description of winding the watch whilst the crown is still engaged with the screw threads on the pendant. A striking example of coincidental independant thinking? The Droz patent doesn't include the explanation as to why one should want to do this, simply stating that "the Watch can be wound as usual" and omitting the "in as quick and easy a manner" reason given in the Fitch explanation. This wording in the Droz patent seems to be a simple summary of the same section in the Fitch patent, made by someone who didn't understand exactly why Fitch was going to such lengths to describe how easy the operation was.

The Droz 1884 US patent has a very different description of the action of winding the watch: "when the crown A is turned with a right-hand revolution, the cylinder M is rotated, and the ratchet-teeth F' being held in connection with the ratchet-teeth F by means of the spring q and the pin g, this motion is communicated to the cog-wheel E, which operates the winding mechanism. At the same time the watch is thus being wound the male thread l on the pinion C rides up the female thread L until it emerges therefrom, when the longitudinal motion of the pinion C ceases. The right-hand revolution of the crown may be then continued until the watch is wound up ...". Note that the "the male thread l on the pinion C rides up the female thread L until it emerges therefrom " - this description is of the crown being unscrewed until the threads holding it to the case disengage, and then "The right-hand revolution of the crown may be then continued until the watch is wound up". This descrption doesn't mention turning the crown back and forth or from left to right and back whilst the threads are still engaged. It is very different from the description in the UK Droz patent, and also from the Fitch US patent. It seems likely that the wording was changed for the US patent to make it different from the Fitch patent.

Françios Borgel

In 1891 Françpos Borgel of Geneva patented a water resistant watch case which was not as water tight as the cases with screw caps enclosing the crown or screw down crowns, but which provided a higher degree of sealing than the standard case of the day without the inconvenience of the separate cap enclosing the crown, or a screw down crown, and is surprisingly watertight.

You can read more about this case design on my Borgel page.

Gilbert Dennison

Fitch's 1881 patent for a screw down crown seems to have slipped into obscurity, or at least not been widely known outside America, because in 1915 Gilbert Dennison, of the Dennison Watch Case Company of Birmingham, England, and grandson of Aaron Lufkin Dennison, obtained a British patent on a screw down crown very similar to Fitch's design, left-hand screw thread and all. There were some minor differences between Dennison's design and Fitch's, but not very great. I don't think any watches were ever made with Dennison's screw down crown.

Charles Depollier

Another waterproof watch design was the Depollier "Waterproof Dustproof" wristwatch made by Jacques Depollier & Son. This was the subject of several U.S. patents including one for a waterproof crown issued to Charles L. Depollier on January 28, 1919, No. 1,292,441 shown in the picture. The crown has a slotted skirt "g" which bayonet locks under lugs "b" on the side of the case when pushed in and turned clockwise a quarter of a turn or so. The skirt is tapered, pressing down onto a gasket. Turning the crown counter clockwise unlocks it so that the watch can be wound and set. The case has a screw back and bezel, the back and bezel having raised slots to engage with a special key for screwing and unscrewing.

One of these watches was worn by Roland Rohlf during a record altitude height of 34,610 feet on September 18, 1919, in a Curtiss K-12 aeroplane. Advertisements celebrating this achievement not only claimed that the watch was waterproof, but that it even maintained the atmospheric pressure inside the case against the rarefied atmosphere of the high altitude!

Double Case "Hermetic" Watches - Frederick Gruen (US) and Jean Finger (CH)

Gruen and Finger patents

A brutally simple way of protecting a watch was to place it completely inside a larger case with a screw-down bezel, forming an hermetic seal and totally protecting the watch within. Once the bezel was unscrewed, the watch flipped out on a hinge to allow the hands to be set and the movement wound. Watches employing this double case design are often called "Hermetic" after the Rolex watch of this name which used one of these cases.

Although the hermetic case achieved the desired waterproof effect, it had the major drawback that the bezel of the outer case had to be unscrewed every day so that the watch could be wound. Apart from being a nuisance to the owner, the case threads and the milling on the bezel wore quite quickly from this continuous use, so this was a far from ideal solution. However, despite these drawbacks, a number of manufacturers including Zenith, Eberhard and Rolex produced watches using this case design. It was very useful in the tropics where the heat and damp quickly corroded the movements of watches in ordinary cases, and hermetically sealed watches are sometimes referred to as "tropical watches" because of this.

The origin of this case design is a bit of a puzzle because there are two virtually identical patents for the idea. One U.S. patent by Frederick Gruen, "Wrist-Watch" patent number U.S. 1,303,888 with a priority date of May 29, 1918, published May 20, 1919, and another later Swiss patent by Jean Finger "Montre a remontoire avec boitier protecteur" (watch winder with protective box) patent number CH 89276 with a priority date of 4 January 1921, published 2 May 1921. The image shows figures from the two patents and you can see how similar they are. As far as I can see, the principal difference between these two patents is that the Gruen watch is hooked in and easily removable, whereas the Finger watch is hinged to the case. Apart from that, they are essentially the same.

How do two such similar patents get issued within three years of each other? International patent treaties in force at the time should have protected inventions in other countries. Patent examiners have a duty to do due diligence to ensure that patents are neither obvious nor duplicate existing inventions, wherever that "prior art” exists. But during the period of these patents, means of communication and search were not so sophisticated as now, and foreign offices do not necessarily track each other very well, even today. Ultimately, patent law is based on litigation. If the holder of the priority patent does not realize the existence of the later patent, or chooses not to litigate, nothing happens. The Gruen patent was issued while the First World War was still raging, and communication with Switzerland would have been even more difficult than usual. It may be that Finger never saw Gruen’s patent, and maybe by the time of Finger’s patent, Gruen had given up on the idea. Perhaps it is not so surprising that the two patents are so similar: as I remarked before, the idea is brutally simple.

It appears that Hans Wilsdorf, co-founder and managing director of Rolex liked the Jean Finger design and bought some rights to the patent, because he registered exactly the same case design on May 26, 1922, under British patent GB 197208 "Improvements in and Relating to Watches," published May 10, 1928. A Rolex watch called the "Hermetic" using this case design was produced from 1924. Some Rolex Hermetic cases bear the initials JF for Jean Finger and the words Double Boitier Brevet 89276 (Double Case Patent 89276), a reference to the Jean Finger patent. However, this doesn’t seem to have precluded other manufacturers producing watches using the same case design. For instance I have a watch made in Switzerland for the Coventry, England, firm of Rotherham and Sons Ltd. It has a Glasgow hallmark which dates it to 1929/30, so the purchase by Wilsdorf of some rights to the patent, and the introduction in 1926 of the waterproof Rolex Oyster, didn’t succeed in sweeping this case design away overnight.

Perhaps when the Rolex Oyster came along, Wilsdorf lost interest in this design. Jean Finger however evidently retained his faith in the design, because he registered a slightly improved version of his original 1921 patent on 2 February 1929, Swiss patent number CH 138224, published 16 April 1930. By then though the end of the road for this design was clearly in sight, and I have never seen a watch produced to this later patent.

Hans Wilsdorf and Rolex

The story of the waterproof watch would hardly be complete without Hans Wilsdorf, co-founder and managing director of Rolex, and the Rolex Oyster watch.

In the Rolex "Jubilee Vade Mecum" Wilsdorf wrote "To my technical assistants, my constant refrain was, from the earliest days: We must succeed in making a watch case so tight that our movements will be permanently guaranteed against damage caused by dust, perspiration, water, heat and cold. Only then will the perfect accuracy of the Rolex watch be secured. "

In 1925 Wilsdorf bought the rights to a patent for a screw down waterproof crown from the inventors Paul Perregaux and Georges Perret of La Chaux-de-Fonds. Although Wilsdorfprobably thought that this was the breakthrough that he had been looking for, the Perregaux and Perret design didn't have a clutch as in the Almon Twing design, but was essentially the same as the 1891 Fitch design with a left hand screw thread, and consequently suffered all the drawbacks of that design. Wilsdorf must have quickly realised that this was not a solution he could offer to the public, but the technicians at Aegler quickly reinvented the idea of using a clutch to disengage the crown from the stem when the crown was being screwed down onto, or unscrewed from the case.

This new screw down crown design was paired with a case having a screw back and bezel, and in 1926 the waterproof Rolex Oyster was born. The design of the first Rolex Oysters was not perfect, because the crown had to be unscrewed to wind the watch every day, leading to heavy wear of the screw threads. Most early Oysters have had their original crowns and stem tubes replaced because of this. This problem was oversome in 1931 with the introduction of the "Perpetual" self-winding movement. You can read more about the development of the Rolex Oyster on my Rolex page. (Clicking the link will open a page in a new tab.)

Taubert & Fils

At about the same time as Rolex were developing the Oyster, the company Taubert & Fils, who had taken over the company of François Borgel in 1924, were developing a watch case with a screw back and cork seal in the stem tube to seal the winding stem. The benefit of the cork stem seal designed by the Tauberts was that the crown didn't need to be unscrewed to wind the watch, the owner could wind the watch with no more inconvenience than with a normal watch, and the stem was sealed all the time, even if the crown was withdrawn to set the hands.

The first watches with these cases were produced in the mid 1920s. The Tauberts patented the cork stem seal in 1929 and a screw back case with a distinctive 10 flats "decagonal" design in 1931. They went on to supply this case to many manufacturers including Patek Philippe and Vacheron Constantin. You can read more about this case design in the Taubert section on my Borgel Borgel page. (Clicking the link will open a page in a new tab.)

Frédéric Baumgartner

Frédéric Baumgartner was the maker of the 1932 Omega Marine, the first dive watch, and the designer and maker of the 1939 Omega Marine Standard, a waterproof rectangular watch with a clip back case. You can read more about this in the Omega section of my history page. (Clicking the link will open a page in a new tab.)

The Baumgartner case of the Marine was used only by Omega and Tissot, although apparently there is one in the Patek Philippe Museum, so they may have experimented with the case before Omega secured the monopoly. The rectangular clip back case was more widely used. In addition to Omega and Tissot, I believe that Baumgartner supplied these clip back cases to Jaeger LeCoultre, Movado, Longines, and possibly others. Watches in these cases are also seen marked Bravingtons, a renowned jewellers in Kings Cross, London, who retailed watches under their own name. If you have any information on any of these other makes, please get in touch.

Concluding Remarks

By the late 1920s we have all the essential components of the modern waterproof watch - screw cases, gaskets, screw-down crowns and stem seals, some of them invented several times. There was a bit of a lull as the inventors, principally Rolex and the Tauberts, got on with making their patented designs, but once the patents came off in the 1940s, there was a veritable explosion of waterproof watch designs using these technologies.

If you have any comments, corrections, requests or suggestions, then please feel free to email them to me at . You shouldn't need to copy the email address, just click on it. I answer all emails I receive, so if you do write to me and don't get an answer in a few days, please check your junk and spam folders. Even better, when you write, add my email address to your contacts and my emails will not be filtered out. I look forward to hearing from you! Regards - David