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Jewelry Repair Clinic, Friday November 15th

Rolex Sea-Dweller watches - Gruno's Diamonds

Rolex Sea-Dweller

Citizen of the deep

Rolex created the Oyster Perpetual Sea-Dweller in 1967 to meet the challenge of prolonged underwater missions. The Sea-Dweller is specifically designed for saturation diving. Thanks to its helium escape valve, it can withstand decompression on ascent and master the return to the surface – the final phase of deep-sea exploration.

Guaranteed waterproof to a depth of 2,000 feet (610 meters) when it was launched in 1967, then to 4,000 feet (1,220 meters) from 1978, the Sea-Dweller combines all the attributes of the modern divers’ watch.

Tested in real-life conditions as part of the Tektite program, initiated jointly by NASA, the US Navy and the US Government in 1969, the Sea-Dweller was employed during the first major experiments with underwater habitats.

Sea-Dweller

The new face of diving

In the 1960s, so-called “saturation” diving made it possible to remain at great depths for extended periods. It consists of housing divers in a pressurized habitat, so as to reproduce the pressure that prevails in their underwater working environment. This means that they need only undergo a single decompression process, at the very end of the mission.

This process can damage the watch. Divers breathe a mix of gases composed mainly of helium, whose extremely fine atoms can penetrate the case. On returning to the surface, the helium trapped inside can create a phenomenon of excess internal pressure liable to compromise its integrity.