Blancpain CEO Marc Hayek chose the world’s largest aquarium, the Dubai Aquarium & Underwater Zoo in the Dubai Mall, to reveal the the brand’s latest diving watch. The X Fathoms combines elements of its famous Fifty Fathoms ancestor with a modern mechanical depth gauge and several claimed world firsts to create what Blancpain calls the most high-performance mechanical diving watch ever made. Find wallpaper inside.

Blancpain lists these world firsts for a mechanical dive watch:

- Measured depth up to 90 meters
- Maximum depth reached memory
- Separate indication on the 0-15m scale with an +/- 30 cm precision
- Retrograde 5-minute counter for decompression stops

The Fathom X movement, reference 9918B, is based on the Manufacture-made Caliber 1315, which has proved its worth by powering several Fifty Fathoms models. The self-winding movement is equipped with three barrels ensuring a five-day power reserve, and a silicon balance-spring to withstand magnetic disturbances. The imposing 55.65mm case made of satin-brushed titanium is water-resistant to 30 bar or 300 meters. It features a helium decompression valve for saturation diving and the characteristic unidirectional rotating bezel.

Blancpain says it chose an amorphous metal for the depth gauge membrane because its research showed the material’s elastic properties and resistance to permanent deformation make it ideal for this application. This material allows the thickness of the membrane to be reduced by half compared to steel, and yields a gain in precision. According to Blancpain, the long-term stability of amorphous metal avoids the risk of microcrack formation. The non-linear nature of the membrane deformation was addressed by the asymmetrical toothing of the rack and pinion that linearizes the curve of the membrane deformation. Blancpain says the individual calibration of each X Fathoms guaranties maximal precision of depth indications.

Research also lead to modified displays to improve legibility. Central depth indication hands set against a matte black background enhance contrast, and three-color luminescence distinguishes indications useful underwater. The X Fathoms is secured to the wrist by what Blancpain calls “the most complex injected rubber strap ever conceived.” The strap comprises 14 articulated parts to ensure a perfect fit on the wrist and allow water to seep in under the watch in order to come in contact with the membrane under all circumstances.

As we go to press, the USA price has not yet been determined. The images below may be enlarged with a click.

You may be accustomed to seeing the dial side of the watches featured here, but in the case of this Blancpain Villeret for Only Watch 2011, the case back reveals the art that makes this watch special. The bridges of the “Villeret Grande Décoration” unique piece are hand engraved to depict a typical Monegasque scene, representing the Rock and its hinterland. Find the wish price and wallpaper inside.

The 18K red gold case measures 45mm in diameter and the case back is engraved “Pièce Unique” and “Only Watch 2011”. The dial is white “Grand Feu” enamel with 12 painted enamel black Roman numerals. Red gold feuille hands indicate the time.

The movement is a caliber 15B, rhodium-plated, with 20 jewels and a 40-hour power-reserve. The dial, case and movement are signed. This piece is accompanied by a fitted box and certificate.

The wish price is 45,000 to 65,000 euros. The image may be enlarged with a click.

Additional information, including the dates and locations for the U.S. Only Watch previews, appears below the image.

The U.S. previews of the unique pieces to be auctioned at Only Watch in Monaco later this month will take place from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Friday, September 9 at Westime Beverly Hills in Los Angeles, and during the same hours on Monday, September 12 at Antiquorum Auctioneers at 595 Madison Ave. in New York City. Find helpful links inside.

The Only Watch auction will take place on Friday, September 23 at 4 p.m. in the Salle Belle Epoque of the Hermitage Hotel in Monaco. Attending will be H.S.H. Prince Albert II of Monaco, who has supported the event since its creation.

Forty of the world’s leading luxury wristwatch manufacturers are donating unique and one-of-a-kind timepieces for the event, and 100% of the proceeds will be donated to combat Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. The auction will be conducted by Antiquorum. Here are some helpful links:

View the virtual catalog (requires Flash)

View the online catalog

Register to bid online

Learn more about Only Watch

Putting the power reserve display on the back of the watch is nothing new. Incorporating the display into the movement has also been done. Incorporating the power reserve display onto the winding rotor, on the other hand, is a patented world first. Let’s see how Blancpain’s newest L-Evolution Tourbillon makes this technical leap.

Blancpain’s newest L-evolution model is equipped with a tourbillon and a large date display, but the most interesting bit is the power-reserve indication on a subdial directly integrated onto the oscillating weight. This new complication has been achieved by an original and complex construction. Within this solution, the oscillating weight both provides energy and transmits information.

Power-reserve indications are provided by a planetary or differential gearing that correlates the winding rate of the ratchet with the unwinding rate of the barrel. The hand showing the power reserve is usually connected to the output of the differential. In developing its new approach, Blancpain first had to figure out how to put the power-reserve indicator on the axis of the rotor. As illustrated below, the staff of the differential (a) protrudes on the bridge side of the movement. A transmission wheel (b) takes its rotation over the winding-train bridge to the central axis of the rotor (c). A second wheel coaxial with the rotor, which is normally part of the self-winding system, transmits the rotation to the wheel carrying the power reserve hand through a pinion (e), which reverses the direction of rotation.

Another problem Blancpain faced was to make the power-reserve indication easy to read. The problem is solved by adding a fixed wheel (f) on top of the coaxial transmission wheel. A pinion (g) reverses the direction of rotation and a supplementary wheel (h) carrying the dial is placed coaxially with the power-reserve hand. In this way the system cancels out the rotation of the dial due to the winding rotor.

The final challenge was to secure the power-reserve indication when the barrel is fully wound. In this case, friction disconnects the gearing. The hand comes up against the applied buffer (i) allowing the dial to rotate. In this way the hand shows that the mainspring is fully wound, while eliminating any possibility of damaging the mechanism.

In a final touch, the appliqué (i) is fixed on the dial so that it hides the screw securing the rotor to its axle. This creates the illusion of the rotor floating beneath the sapphire-crystal caseback.

This original device is incorporated within the manufacture Blancpain 4225G calibre, as shown below (images may be enlarged with a click).

Blancpain is creating some aesthetic pleasures with its reinterpretations of the Villeret collection, which started last year. At Baselworld, the manufacture from Le Brassus showed a single-pusher chronograph with complete calendar and moon phases. This complicated watch, available in two versions, features classic dials that are both highly attractive and highly legible. Find wallpaper and pricing inside.

This model is equipped with Calibre 66CM8, a movement that provides optimal user friendliness. The complete calendar and moon phase mechanisms have been designed to avoid risk of damaging the movement during setting. The movement consists of 450 components, including 35 jewels, in a package measuring 32 x 7.5mm with a power reserve of 40 hours.

The indications are adjusted by means of under-lug correctors, a patented Blancpain innovation allowing fast correction without any need for a pointed instrument. The hidden correctors and the co-axial monopusher to control the chronograph results in a pure, simple case, which is a trademark of the Villeret collection.

The blued steel serpentine date hand is an elegant means of distinguishing this indicator from those showing the time. A transparent sapphire crystal case-back reveals the quality of the finishing on the movement and its guilloché-work oscillating weight.

This new member of the Villeret family measures 40mm in diameter and is available in a red gold version with a stamped opaline dial (shown below) or in steel with a white dial, both fitted with a 22mm alzavellined alligator leather strap secured by a folding clasp. The price in steel is $20,300 and in red gold it is $31,500.

The image may be enlarged with a click.

At Baselworld this week, Blancpain presented its first annual calendar combined with the GMT function. The Villeret Annual Calendar GMT is equipped with the new in-house automatic calibre 6054F. Find pricing and wallpaper inside.

As an annual calendar, the movement requires one date adjustment per year, at the transition from February to March. For all other months, the watch itself moves on from the 30th or the 31st to the first day of the following month. It also has a small 24-hour hand in a subdial at 8 o’clock, which serves as a reference time. The GMT function is provided by the central hour hand of the watch, which is linked to the date. The generously-sized date apertures are arranged to enhance easy readability.

This new model is available in white or red gold versions. The hands and hour-markers on the stamped opaline white dial match the material of the case, which is equipped with Blancpain’s under-lug correctors system. The corrector at 1 o’clock changes the day, and the one at 5 o’clock adjusts the month. Fast GMT, date and time-setting adjustments can be made using the crown.

The 40mm x 10.9mm case features sapphire crystals front and rear. The alzavel-lined alligator leather strap is fitted with a triple-blade folding clasp.

The Villeret Annual Calendar GMT is priced at $38,200 in either red or white gold.

The images below may be enlarged with a click.

Captain Robert Maloubier’s life story reads like an action thriller that makes James Bond look like a milquetoast, and his exploits launched a chain of events that would result in the creation of the mechanical diver’s watch as we know it today. This is his story.

It was June, 1940. German Panzer tanks were closing in on Paris. Seventeen year old Robert Maloubier was headed 400 miles south toward Bordeaux on a bicycle along roads jammed with refugees who were easy targets for the Stuka fighter bombers overhead. He hoped to secure passage on a ship to England, but that plan failed, and he remained in France. Twice he crossed the demarcation line separating the occupied north from the free southern zone. Caught by the Germans, he was sentenced to two months in prison.

After his release, Maloubier joined the French armed forces, and in November, 1942, he found himself in Bizerte, Tunisia, surrounded by Germans. Maloubier escaped and headed for Algiers, 500 miles to the west, again on a bicycle, where the Allies had just landed. There he joined the Special Detachment (SD), a British underground unit and a branch of Winston Churchill’s Special Operations Executive (SOE).

Cpt. Robert Maloubier

In early 1943, Maloubier was transferred to England where he trained as a saboteur. In June, his training complete, he parachuted over Normandy behind the Atlantic Wall to organize French underground fighting groups. His group blew up a power station, a steel plant, and a submarine tender. Wounded and captured by Feldgendarms (German military police), he escaped and was flown back to England by an SOE “moonlight squadron” Lockheed Hudson bomber (so-called because the clandestine missions often meant landing by moonlight).

A Lockheed Hudson bomber.

On June 7, 1944 – the day after D-Day – Maloubier parachuted over Limousin in central France. There he trained the maquisards (rural guerrilla bands of the French Resistance) and lead ambushes against the SS Panzer Division that perpetrated the June 10 massacre at Oradour sur Glane, where 642 inhabitants, including women and children, were killed. Again Maloubier was wounded and captured, and again providence took a hand as he was freed to take a band of nurses and German casualties to a French hospital.

In November 1944, Maloubier was sent to Asia when he joined Force 136, a branch of the SOE fighting Japan. After jungle warfare training in Ceylon and Calcutta, Maloubier was dropped over Laos shortly before VJ Day and wounded by an early Vietcong force. With his fighters, he held the province and became military governor, a post he held until relieved by Regulars in March, 1946.

Jungle warfare training in Ceylon.

Cpt. Maloubier in Japan, 1945.

Back in France, Maloubier joined the French Special Forces where he became an explosives, weapons and parachute instructor. Then it was off to England where he trained with the Royal Marines and Royal Navy in the Special Boat Service as a frogman and deep sea diver.

In 1952, Maloubier was stationed at Oran on Algeria’s Mediterranean coast. There, he established the Ecole des Nageurs de Combat, literally the Combat Swimmers School. The school would produce Les Nageurs de Combat – the Combat Swimmers – the French equivalent of the U.S. Navy Seals. Maloubier pioneered the group and served as its first commanding officer. The unit’s missions included intelligence gathering and planting explosives on enemy ships, usually at night.

Cpt. Maloubier exploring caves deep underground.

The lives of the men and their success as a unit depended on their equipment. In 1952, underwater diving was still in its infancy and the gear was primitive. It fell to Maloubier and his officers to design new and better equipment for the unit. “We had to start from scratch” as Maloubier put it.

Maloubier diving with primitive equipment in 1952.

Thus began a two year stint during which Maloubier researched, designed and tested new diving equipment. The goal was silent movement underwater and perfectly coordinated maneuvers among the divers in the sea at night. There could be no bubbles, no sound, and coordinated action – timing – among the divers had to be perfect. Nothing could betray the divers’ presence or endanger the mission.

“We designed diving suits, and fins that were much larger than those in use at the time. We designed diving goggles, and of course watches, because we were not satisfied with the watches that existed at that time…. With my second in command (Lieutenant Claude Riffaud) and another officer, we sat down at a table and said ‘OK, we have to devise a watch that can properly be used by us.’ So, one of us took a compass and a ruler and a pen and a piece of paper and we said ‘OK, what do we want?’”

The list they drew up and the drawings they made formed the basis for mechanical diver’s watches as we know them today. The list included:

• An oversize, waterproof case.
• A self-winding movement: “It should be automatic, otherwise when you wind the watch, even if you have a gasket, the watch leaks after a while.”
• Large, clear, luminous numerals, marks, and hands for easy reading underwater at night.
• A unidirectional rotating bezel displaying minute markers to let divers calculate the diving time.

Within a few hours over the course of an afternoon, the modern mechanical diver’s watch was born, at least on paper. It was not simply a waterproof watch, but one designed by combat divers for combat divers.

The next step was taking the watch from paper to production. “We looked all over the world for someone to manufacture this watch… There was no French watchmaker that would agree to do so…. We found Blancpain, a small Swiss watchmaker… Blancpain agreed to manufacture the watch. That’s how it all happened.”

An early Fifty Fathoms.

For Maloubier, the next step was field testing. “The first prototype was sent to us. It was called the Blancpain Fifty Fathoms. They sent it, we tested it, and it was good. It was proper looking. This is what we wanted. … We tested it and it was OK. The first trial was very good. No problems. It never leaked. It was proper. We could read it at night, and so on. It was as we had drawn it.”

Maloubier diving with the Fifty Fathoms.

The rest, as they say, is history. In the following years, several armed forces and elite units adopted the Fifty Fathoms as their official watch, including the German Bundesmarine, U.S. Navy Seals, and the Spanish and Israeli navies.

Underwater researchers and scientists also adopted the watch, most famous among them Jacques Cousteau, as captured in Louie Malle’s 1956 film Le Monde du silence (The Silent World). Shot on board the Calypso in 1955, the film won both the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival and the Oscar for best documentary. The watch was also adopted by the French Groupe d’études et de recherches sous-marines or Sub-marine Research and Study Group which was created by Philip Tailliez, Jacques Cousteau and Frederic Dumas to develop and improve scuba diving equipment.

Not surprisingly, Maloubier and Cousteau were friends. The two first met in 1953, when Maloubier joined Cousteau for lunch about the Calypso. They would meet several more times over the years.

To date, Maloubier has published six books about his adventure-filled life, and at age 87, a seventh book in the works. The books have not been translated into English, but they tell riveting tales of a true-to-life war hero who will have more than a footnote in the history of modern horology.

Blancpain previews its first Villeret Demi-Fuseau Horaire: a travel watch that allows the second time zone to be set in half-hour increments. We are all familiar with the standard 24 time zones that differ by one hour, but many countries, including India, Australia and Canada also use half-hour or “offset” time zones. Find specs and wallpaper for this new model from Blancpain inside.

Blancpain’s new dual time zone model is very user friendly. A few turns of the crown adjusts the date, reference or home time, and second time zone. A co-axial pusher on the crown selects fast adjustment or half time zone mode. Correcting the home time automatically adjusts the second time zone.

This watch is powered by a new 32mm automatic caliber 5254DF with 321 parts, 28 jewels, and a 72 hour power reserve. The reference time is displayed at 12 o’clock and the half time zone and seconds are displayed in the center. the day-night indicator for the reference time is displayed at 9 o’clock. The date, which changes with the second time zone, is displayed at 6 o’clock. The date change or time zone mode indicator is located at 4 o’clock.

The Villeret Demi-Fuseau Horaire features a 40mm x 12.12mm half-hunter case in red gold fitted with a sapphire caseback revealing guilloché work on the oscillating wright. The dial is engine-turned opaline with red gold hour markers.

Click the image below to view a much larger version.

For the first time in its history, Blancpain has created a special-shaped watch. The Manufacture in Le Brassus is presenting an authentic jewelery creation set with over 500 diamonds and pink sapphires, and housing the world’s smallest self-winding movement, caliber 615. This extraordinary timepiece is to be issued in a symbolically limited edition of 14 to celebrate Valentine’s Day 2010.

Blancpain is reintroducing the famous “Lady Bird” Calibre 615, regarded as the world’s smallest self-winding movement. It can be admired through a sapphire crystal case-back. This unique shaped watch is delivered with two satin straps – one black and the other white. It comes in an elegant presentation box featuring a design reflecting the pure lines of this dainty Valentine’s Day model.

Countering the trend toward lower-priced offerings, Blancpain announces the newest Spécialités Tourbillon Diamants, a 40mm men’s model with more than 20 carats of diamonds. The white gold 3 piece case is set with 571 stones totaling 14.15 carats, and the dial adds another 164 diamonds and 5.17 carats. The clasp, crown and hands add the remaining carat, give or take. The automatic caliber 25A tourbillon movement is composed of 238 components with 29 jewels (not diamonds) with a 168 hour power reserve. If you have to ask, the price is $1,342,700.

Watch aficionados can look forward to a fantastic fall auction on September 17th at Antiquorum Auctioneers in New York City. More than 300 collectible vintage and modern timepieces will be available, including several outstanding timepieces produced by Patek Philippe and an extraordinary Seiko wristwatch that was designed for and worn in space.

Auction highlights include a Patek Philippe Ref. 3939HP, a unique piece in platinum with black dial featuring a minute repeater and tourbillon. A silver dial is also included. The presale estimate is $400,000 to $600,000. Other important Patek Philippe watches offered in this sale include a platinum Ref. 3974 estimated at $450,000 to $650,000, a platinum Ref. 5013 estimated at $450,000 to $650,000, and unique Ref. 5016 in platinum with black dial, plus a silver dial and a solid platinum case back, also estimated at $450,000 to $650,000.

The sale also features Blancpain 1735 Grande Complication No. 28/30 estimated at $450,000 to $650,000 and a Jaeger-LeCoultre Gyrotourbillon No. 1, No. 2/75, estimated at $320,000 to $370,000. Collectors of “flown” pieces (watches that have been in space) will be able to bid on a Seiko Spring Drive Spacewalk created especially for the 12 day Soyuz TMA-13 mission to the International Space Station and worn by private space explorer Richard Garriott. Proceeds from this sale of this piece will go to the Nature Conservancy and the Challenger Center.

You can read more about these and many other timepieces and view large resolution images at the updated Antiquorum web site. The sale will take place starting at 11 a.m. on Thursday, September 17 at the Fuller Building, 595 Madison Ave., 5th Floor, New York, NY.

Below, the Patek Philippe Ref. 3939HP

The Seiko Spring Drive Spacewalk