Blancpain

The Blancpain Fifty-Fathoms Milspec I represents one of the most iconic and collectible of all Fifty-Fathoms ever produced. As the name would imply, it was designed to Military Specifications for use in the field. In the mid 1950s, the US Navy set out a series of specs for a watch to be supplied to its divers.

The Milspec I was formally introduced in 1957 and had several unique attributes to differentiate itself from more ‘civilian-oriented’ models of the Fifty-Fathoms. The Milspec case featured an almost sand-blasted matte finish, and the dial was no-longer an elegant gloss one – but a matte dial; features requested to mitigate light reflections that would give away the wearer’s position to the enemy. However, the feature that came to dominate that matte black dial was the two-tone moisture indicator just above the 6 o'clock luminous plot.

The moniker Fifty Fathoms was derived from the British measurement of 50 fathoms, or approximately 91.45 meters, considered the maximum depth a diver could achieve with the gas mixture available at the time of the watch’s inception.