Rotating Bezel Landed on the Dive Watch

In the third part of our ongoing series on the basics of the dive watch, we at Diveintowatches.com explained about how its most characteristic feature works. In this edition, we dive a little bit deeper and discover its origins.

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A watch bezel with an added functionality — whether fixed or rotatable — has certainly been neither exclusive to the dive watch nor invented for it: such a bezel can be used for measuring speed, pulse, distance/position, navigation and directions, meeting times, et cetera. At one point, there was even one used to help in quitting smoking. And we need not even mention the buzz-saw functions and other fictional accessories in some of those James Bond movie watches. Various racing and aircraft instruments have also been equipped with rotating markers for quite a while. So, if you wanted a wristwatch with a rotating, external bezel before 1953, you most likely had to buy a timepiece that was used for auto racing or, even more likely, for aviation: pilots’ watches often came equipped with a bi-directional rotating bezel with simple markers.

The concept dates back to 1929, when Philip Van Horn Weems applied for a patent for a wristwatch with a more complex external bezel, which was granted in 1935 and soon found its way on to many pilots’ watches, the most important one being the legendary Weems watch from Longines (other brands using the same lockable bezel included Omega, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Movado and Zenith).


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