the enduring appeal of the Dive Watch (is it based on signalling and identification?)

I had a discussion the other day (online) which (I'm sure) prompted Google to fish this Hodinkee article up into my feed. I felt that it was entirely bang on with what I was saying in that discussion about why we like our divers watches.

This watch was my second Seiko (discussed here) which I bought in around 1984. I picked it because I liked the Diver Style and did an amount of swimming, snorkelling and other wet (weather) activities. 

I liked the bezel timer aspect for daily things too (when the print still showed) and best of all it wasn't a big chunky watch that got in the way of things (discussed here) and shows that this "diver" style watch didn't need to be Bold and Chunky as it was thinner and lighter than many modern watches (such as my SNK805 or SRPE61K1).

Which is more interesting in light of the Hodinkee article. However while I strongly identified with everything identified in that piece there were a few points I'd change the wording of very slightly. So if I may make changes:

This was probably more true in the 1950s than it is today – case manufacturing precision, as well as improvements in seals and gaskets, mean that the days of it being advisable to take off your watch before washing your hands are long gone, and virtually any mechanical watch from a Seiko 5 on up is going to be able to tolerate splashes and even brief periods of immersion, and emerge none the worse for wear. I wore my first mechanical watch, a Seiko 5, into the ocean every summer for several years. I happened at the end of that period to have begun doing watchmaking as a hobby and out of curiosity I took the back off the watch, curious to see what it was becoming clear to me, was injudicious behaviour, might have done to the innards. There was a hint of corrosion around the inner part of the crown tube but that was it). However, though it may be less true today than it once was, the habit of thinking of perceiving dive watches as generally a significantly more practical and pragmatic choice for daily wear than non-dive watches, is probably permanently ingrained at this point.

So this paragraph shows clearly that the idea of the dive watch is rooted in the past when if you did want a watch which was robust and reliable in the field that probably a dive watch was all there was (to Captain Willard, who picked a Seiko not a Rolex) ... his humble Seiko 5 had no problems. Indeed my Seiko "Quartz Sports 100" was not a proper diver but a diver alike. As shown in my blog post there was no undue effect from swimming, snorkelling and SCUBA diving (as I discovered when changing my battery myself)

Remember this is not a certified diver, its just a diver styled watch. All I can say is that my experience matches his.

The article continues:

The second answer is that like any other sort of watch, dive watches say something about us. A dive watch projects, in its broad-shouldered rejection of the unnecessary, the same trustworthy, here-to-get-work done vibe as rolled up sleeves, a loosened tie, and a (navy blue) jacket thrown over the back of a conference room chair with a devil-may-care disregard of wrinkles. It says that you're a person who, though you might spend the majority of the day warming a desk chair with your posterior, could outside the workplace be a person of physical bravery, if not outright daring, who just might need a watch that will tolerate, say, jumping off the side of the Staten Island Ferry on a muggy August afternoon to save a loved one's errant poodle (it could happen).

... to basically say that its about how you pick your jewellery and your clothes to send a message (perhaps to yourself?) of who "you are" (or how you wish to sculpt your narrative).

This is starting to shape up as King Wang territory isn't it. If it wasn't clear by now that the author thinks its all about how you imagine yourself he states:

A thinner, more understated (less overstated?) watch may speak to your sense of sober discretion, or your refinement of taste but these are probably secondary considerations in the minds of most dive watch lovers, who all things being equal would rather be thought of as the James Bonds of this world, than the Thomas Crowns

And we all know that Bond wore a NATO ... right? The king is dead, long live the king?

A dive watch, in its most classic iterations, doesn't particularly feel designed at all, so much as made simply and purely to suit a particular purpose and that purity of intent has long outlasted the intent's actual relevance, in either diving or everyday life. In short, dive watches feel authentic – they project an air of necessity which other categories of timepieces simply fail to match, on many levels. In a world full of timepieces whose designs seem more or less arbitrary, or at best present in order to appeal to highly subjective vagaries of taste, the dive watch, we feel, looks the way it looks for a reason. This solid feeling of grounding in reality that the best dive watches have,  project this absence of arbitrariness and subjectivity in their basic features, is I think the most substantial reason for their enduring appeal.

With those minor changes (because its not really thinking, its the opposite, its not rational and is all emotional) I submit this is one of the best articles I've read.

I would say however that the SNK805 is perhaps another design which has its origins in the pragmatic and minimal practical design views

For this design comes from a time when "flight instrumentation" was actually worn on the navigators wrist. The outer dial is divided to display the minutes well and clearly as the most significant part of the time, meanwhile the hour takes the inner part of the face and we can read it sufficiently accuratly to know which hour we are in. This is the stuff of pre GPS navigational process.

In the 1980's I bought my above Seiko Sports 100 because it had a beautiful orange dial, wasn't thick, was well priced (I bought it used) and I like the diver style; in that order. I bought the SNK805 because I wanted a mechanical watch (which I could leave sitting around for some time and know it wouldn't need a battery change) or just wear every day and know the time - because I wanted to reduce how often I looked at my phone.

The SNK805 has been exemplary in that role for a tiny fraction of the cost of a (Desk) Diver.