Vostok Compressor: Genesis & Reference Guide

The Beginning

Generally speaking, the subject of watches for diving (or “divers”) is vast and multifaceted.

Watch blogs and forums feature plenty of reviews of such watches that are very popular with collectors.

The origins of diver watches can be traced back to different moments depending on who you ask. Personally, I was mostly interested to find out when these watches became popular with the general public. Thankfully, the answer to this question is more or less clear.

Cousteau and The Silent World

It all started with Jacques-Yves Cousteau. In 1953-1954 he shot a documentary called “The Silent World” (released in 1956) that immediately became famous and received multiple international awards. For the first time ever, the film featured impressive underwater cinematography in color and the public was hooked. The underwater thematic became one of the major trends and the demand for diving equipment exploded. All apparel related to diving or to Cousteau in particular became super popular.

The watch industry obviously couldn’t miss out on this opportunity. The advent of diver watches for civilians is the perfect example of a successful technical solution that has been brilliantly marketed.

Rolex creates a watch for Jacques-Yves

Cousteau was a friend of René-Paul Jeanneret, who was Rolex’s director of marketing back in the day. Rolex developed a special watch for Cousteau that was actually the first prototype of the legendary Submariner, and one of the very first diver watches in history. Cousteau used this watch while working on The Silent World.

The watch was conceived as a professional tool for scuba divers and was suitable for deep dives. It was waterproof (or, more precisely, hermetic) for up to 660 feet / 200 meters, had lume on hands and hour indexes (it was obviously radium lume at that time) and featured a rotating bezel.

Here’s a picture of this watch I found online :

Bezel: the keystone of a diver watch

The rotating bezel was the main feature of the diver watch and was actually the whole point of using such a watch.

A bezel is an independently rotating ring around the watch dial used for timing. In a diver watch, the bezel is used to measure the elapsed time from the beginning of the dive as well as to time decompression stops the diver needs to observe on the way back to the surface. At the time (beginning of 1950s), there were no diving computers and a diver watch was an extremely useful tool that protected divers from the bends.

The bezel is installed on top of the watch case and, in principle, its existence doesn’t have any impact on the functioning and the water resistance of the watch itself.

It was particularly important to make sure the bezel doesn’t budge if the watch hits something underwater. The bezel’s position determined the decompression time and the consequences of an accidentally rotated bezel could be lethal. Various techniques were used in order to prevent this. For example, watch manufacturers could calibrate the amount of friction needed to turn the bezel using a wave spring fitted under the bezel. Alternatively – and this is now part of ISO 6425 standards for a diver watch – bezels were made unidirectional, i.e. it can only be rotated clockwise so an accidental rotation could only increase the apparent elapsed time, which would in turn increase the required decompression time when going back to the surface.

Who was first?

So do we know who produced the first watch for divers? Blancpain considers that their Fifty Fathoms was the “first modern diver’s watch”, introduced for the first time in 1953 (the watch was initially developed for the French military divers squad called Nageurs de Combat). A fathom is a unit of length equal to 1.8 meters, and thus the first Fifty Fathoms was watertight for up to almost 100 meters. Apparently, Cousteau also used one when he worked on The Silent World, before he replaced it with a Rolex.

Here is a picture from the internet:

In my humble opinion, Jacques-Yves Cousteau, having used his Blancpain, showed the watch to his friend from Rolex who – being the director of marketing – immediately understood that there was a tremendous commercial opportunity. And Jeanneret exploited this opportunity. Starting from 1954, the Submariner / Sea Dweller lines generated healthy profits for Rolex and resulted in a myriad of imitations and homage watches from other well-known watch brands.

In the end of the day, it looks like the Blancpain Fifty Fathoms was indeed the first waterproof watch with a diving bezel. However, the Rolex Submariner was sold on a comfortable bracelet with a safe buckle, whereas the Blancpain came on a tropic strap or on an elastic metallic bracelet. Furthermore, the Rolex was waterproof for up to 200m vs less than 100m for the Blancpain. Only the Submariner had a screw-down crown – the Fifty Fathoms had a simple one, albeit with a doubled seal. On the other hand, the Blancpain had a uni-directional bezel, which resulted in additional safety for the diver.

Overall score: 3-1 for the Rolex Submariner… Even though this watch wasn’t the first one to be released, its technical features seem to be superior and, in my opinion, we can say that Rolex created the first quality civil diver watch.

Compressors

The presence of an additional outer ring on the case made diver watches heftier. Watches needed to be highly readable, so designs had to be brighter, used larger fonts and stronger contrast. Therefore diver watches looked way different from “normal” watches of that time.

Obviously, they were significantly bigger. Most men’s watches of that era had 33-35mm cases, whereas diver watches were at least 40mm in diameter and were also much thicker than normal timepieces. In addition, the designs were in striking contrast with formal dress watches that were the standard back then.

This situation called for a technical solution that would combine high water resistance and a more formal look. And during the mid-1950s the famous watch case maker Ervin Piquerez SA (EPSA) patented a new way of providing watch cases with a better water resistance. This is how EPSA’s cases worked: with the increasing pressure the caseback is pressed against the O-ring seal and improves water resistance. The more depth, the more pressure and the greater seal.

Unfortunately this is the only technical illustration I managed to find:

There were two generations of compressors from EPSA – Compressor / Compressor 2 (first generation) and Super Compressor (second generation). Ervin Piquerez manufactured compressor cases for many known (JLC, Hamilton, Longines…) and not-so-known (Droz, Enicar, Wittnauer…) watch brands starting from mid-1950s and until the beginning of 1970s.

In the following photograph, for example, you can see a Glycine Combat in a Compressor case:

While Compressor / Compressor 2 cases were designed for watches with increased water resistance, Super Compressors were specifically intended for diver watches, and on top of that they had a pretty much formal look. The rotating bezel in these watches is placed under the crystal and is rotated using one of the crowns, making it less prone to being rotated accidentally. Usually these watches were certified waterproof up to 600ft (200m). In these watches, both crowns are either signed (which is not frequent) or have a “wafer” pattern on them (most of the time). On the caseback (either inside our outside), Super Compressors featured the EPSA trademark dive helmet icon.

The external appearance of a Super Compressor watch is less brutal and massive, it is somewhat suitable for a daily use as a casual or even formal watch. For that reason, they were sometimes called “dress divers”.

Sometime in the 1970s the production of Compressor cases ceased. Perhaps EPSA went bankrupt and nobody took over the patent? Whatever the reason, this means that the only authentic Compressors are vintage watches made before EPSA stopped doing the cases. All the newer ones, like the Longines Legend Diver for example, are tributes to original Super Compressors, but technically speaking they can’t be considered as compressor watches.

This is how Super Compressors look (the LIP is mine, other pics were found online):

Crowns of a typical Super Compressor, with its characteristic pattern:

One of the variants of the diving helm EPSA trademark:

Vostok Compressor

The “Vostok” factory in Chistopol went its own way while developing a watch for scuba divers. The first Soviet diver watch with a bezel – the Vostok Amphibia – was released 14 years after Blancpain, in 1967.

Here’s one of my Amphibias:

Amphibias had and still have an original way of making the case hermetic. Just like with EPSA compressors, the increased pressure improves the Vostok’s water resistance, but not because of the caseback. Vostok Amphibias use a specific plastic crystal that expands under the ocean’s pressure and seals the case.

When the USSR was about to disappear (1990-1991), Chistopol engineers designed their own Compressor. It would probably be more correct to call it Super Compressor because of the two crowns, but the “Compressor” nickname already stuck to this watch. The watch has the classic look and features: an internal bezel, two crowns, 200m water resistance, self-winding movement 2416Б. The case was designed and manufactured in-house.

A pseudo diver

Unfortunately, there’s a serious issue with the Vostok Compressor. Soviet watch engineers designed a diver watch… that can’t be effectively used for diving. All of this because of screw-down crowns. In fact, the crown that rotates the bezel (usually it is the top crown) must function underwater. First of all, it can be used to time the dive. But, more importantly, it is also used to time decompression stops: while ascending, the diver arrives at a certain intermediate depth and must wait several minutes for decompression. These minutes are timed using the rotating inner bezel. This process may need be repeated several times depending on how deep the dive was.

In classic Super Compressors, both crowns are not screw-down and are equipped with double O-rings, so they can be used underwater without compromising the water resistance. With the Vostok Compressor, on the other hand, the screw-down crowns are crucial to guarantee the 200 meters water resistance. Unscrewing a crown underwater would allow water into the watch… So the Compressor by Vostok, as well as the modern reissue by Meranom, is not a diver watch per se as its bezel can only be used onshore.

Various designs of Vostok Compressor

There were several designs of Vostok Compressor:

The first one, the most common (although the word “common” can’t really be used in relation to these watches, some of the rarest among Soviet timepieces):

The second one, that I only saw once on a watch forum:

Recently, additional information about this design was provided on an Italian watch forum following an incredible flea market find for 120 EUR. As it turns out, this watch is powered by the manual-wind movement 2409, has a claimed water resistance up to 300 meters and a unique one-piece screw-down caseback, different from all known Vostok Amphibia watches: the standard caseback being fixed to the case by a special screw-down locking ring.

Another dial design was spotted on a Russian forum in a weird sales thread. This watch, like the previous variant, has the 17-jewels manual 2409 movement and a 300 meters screw-down caseback.

It’s important to note that before these watches surfaced there were only three known Vostok watches with a claimed 300 meters water resistance: the NVCH-30 in the “barrel” and “swing lugs” cases, as well as the 300m Amphibia in the octogonal type 320 case. This means that this compressor watch is the fourth known variant of a 300m water resistant watch produced by the Chistopol factory.

Finally, there’s a fourth compressor variant with a dial identical to the first one but in a different case, featuring single “male” lugs (Neptune-style). Powered by an automatic movement. There are two known watches with this design, and one of them is even available on eBay right now… For $14,900.

Dial design

The design of the dial in the “first” Vostok Compressor above is quite particular.

First I thought that the “grid” on the dial was just a creation of Vostok designers. But then I found some other watches, made by other manufacturers, with the same or similar pattern on the dial. Among those brands: Sicura (acquired by Breitling around that time), Cardinal (a co-branded watch with Sicura that should not be confused with the Soviet export brand), Clebar, and a brand I didn’t even know existed called Superoma. There were probably others too. Here are some pictures (Sicura from my collection, others found online):

All these watches are dated 1960-1970s and were obviously released before the Vostok. The pattern on the dial is pretty much identical and it must have been designed with a specific purpose. But which one?

The success factors

Having said all this, it seems like the Vostok Compressor comprised features corresponding to multiple achievements of the watch industry:

• The EPSA Compressor / Super Compressor heritage
• The technical solutions implemented by Vostok for its Amphibia
• The dial design from Sicura Submarine

And the end result is the Vostok Compressor.

Meranom

The next in line in the genealogical tree is the limited edition Vostok Compressor by Meranom. This watch is thinner but significantly bigger than both the classic EPSA Super Compressor and the Soviet Vostok Compressor. The Meranom’s watch is 43mm wide, whereas typical EPSA Super Compressor is 36mm and the Vostok Compressor is 40mm. In terms of thickness, Meranom is 13.6mm thick against 14.3mm and 14.4mm for EPSA and Vostok.

There were two available designs released by Meranom, below is one of them:

Family photo

And to finish this article, a family photo of diver watches from my personal collection:

1. Glycine Combat in the EPSA Compressor case.
2. LIP NAUTIC-SKI in the EPSA Super Compressor case.
3. Vostok NVCH-30.
4. Sicura Submarine 400.
5. Vostok Compressor.
6. Meranom Compressor 800B28.

Mikhail Kornaukhov

Mikhail, 51, has been collecting watches for more than 4 years. He is particularly interested in iconic timepieces involved in the development of the watch industry.