We’ve already covered the dive watch and how it’s a perfect everyday wear, and a great start to any collection. But we didn’t cover all the nitty-gritty functionalities of the watch. One of the most notable features of a dive watch is its unidirectional, rotating bezel, but what is it and what purpose does it serve. Let’s take a quick look at a brief history, and then how to use it.

The unidirectional bezel allows a diver to measure elapsed time, or more specifically, the dive time and made its first appearance on the Blancpain Fifty Fathoms in the early 1950s. The French Combat-Diving School had reached out to Blancpain to create a watch that met all of their specifications, and included in this list, was a unidirectional bezel. Nowadays most dive watches have some form of rotating bezel, and they can be very useful, both in the water and just in everyday life.

We’re going to show you how to use one with this Blancpain Fifty Fathoms. To start measuring elapsed time go ahead and rotate the bezel using twelve o’clock as your reference point because it marks zero. To start, line it up with the minute hand. Now you can use the bezel’s minute markers to show how much time has passed. And it’s really as simple as that. It’s just a quick way to glance at your wrist and measure time.

Now if you were diving this allows for a safe way to monitor one’s oxygen level, and the reason the bezel can only rotate one direction is it prevents you from staying underwater too long. If the bezel could rotate both ways and was accidentally bumped the watch could read that you had been underwater less time than you actually had, and in extreme cases, could lead to running out of oxygen underwater, and that would be awful. Although the bezel was designed for divers it’s easy to see how it can be used in everyday life. Let us know interesting ways that you like to use a unidirectional bezel, and thanks for watching.

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