Eleven patents that built
the modern dive watch.

Watch with a rotating bezel

Pièce d’horlogerie à lunette tournante

The friction ring. The click spring had not been invented yet, so bezels of the period turned freely in both directions and could be knocked out of position mid-dive, which makes a bezel worse than useless: it reads wrong. This filing seats an open wire spring in a groove between the case body and the bezel, pressing radially through its own undulations to create “une friction empêchant la lunette de tourner intempestivement”, a friction preventing the bezel from turning inadvertently. It is what made the 1957 Model 60 a dive instrument rather than a watch with a bezel on it.

Filed in the Model 60’s own year, under the company’s name at the time, JeanRichard® S.A., Genève, five years before the Aquastar registration. The earliest patent in the archive.

Measurement instrument for underwater diving

Instrument de mesures pour plongées sous-marines

Filed three years before Aquastar S.A. was formally registered, under the predecessor name JeanRichard® S.A., Genève. A wrist-mounted instrument carrying a watch, a bathymeter, a compass and a thermometer on a single rectangular plate fixed between two bracelets, the conceptual ancestor of every wrist-worn dive computer.

The earliest combined dive instrument in the Aquastar archive. Predates the 1962 bezel filings.

Watch with winding-and-setting mechanism and an internal rotating bezel

Pièce d’horlogerie comprenant un organe de remontage et de mise à l’heure et une lunette rotative par rapport au cadran, montée à l’intérieur de la boîte

The first patent filed under the Aquastar name (still listed at the federal office as “Aquastar S.A., ci-devant JeanRichard® S.A.”). Establishes the architecture of the inside-the-case rotating bezel, the technical foundation everything that came after was built on.

Dial-mounted bathymeter (depth-meter wristwatch)

Bathymètre à cadran

Frédéric Robert’s personal first filing. A wristwatch that displays diving depth on a dial driven by ambient pressure, a precursor to every wrist-worn dive computer that followed. Robert files it as a private inventor, then assigns the patent to Aquastar S.A.

Underwater diving watch

Montre de plongée sous-marine

The famous one. A dive watch with a rotating bezel marked with a logarithmic scale calibrated to the nitrogen-saturation tables of the day, letting a diver read no-decompression limits and surface intervals for repeated dives directly off the bezel. The single invention that defined the Aquastar dive watch and entered, in some form, every other Swiss dive watch built since.

The inventor of record is Marc Jasinski, a Belgian engineer-diver, not Aquastar staff. Aquastar S.A. is the assignee and manufacturer.

Waterproof winding crown

Remontoir étanche pour pièce d’horlogerie

Robert’s third filing. A dual-gasket (twin O-ring) winding crown that holds water-resistance through repeated winding cycles at depth. The technical breakthrough that made the 500-meter-rated Benthos 500 possible in 1970, without it, screw-down crowns of the era leaked under repeated pressure cycling.

Improved dial bathymeter

Bathymètre à cadran

The professional version of Robert’s 1963 dial bathymeter. A Bourdon-tube depth gauge with a screw-on protective bell that can be reset against ambient at depth, enabling accurate relative-depth readings during repeated and saturation dives. The filing references the Cousteau 194m and 195m dive experiments. The Comex / Cousteau-era depth gauge.

Watch with internal rotating bezel (improved)

Pièce d’horlogerie à lunette tournante intérieure

A mechanical refinement of the 1962 inside-the-case rotating bezel architecture. The pinion-controlled inner bezel is held precisely against the dial by a return-spring assembly, so the index reading does not drift when the crown is pulled out for time-setting. Filed in France in 1968, then registered in Switzerland.

Slide-rule calculator for underwater divers

Règle à calcul pour plongeur sous-marin

Hannes Keller, the Swiss diver who in 1962 became the first human to reach 1,000 feet (305 m) on open-circuit equipment, files a wrist-worn slide rule for calculating decompression times during a dive. Aquastar manufactures and assigns the patent. One of the more unusual inventor credentials on any Swiss watch patent.

Yacht-race timer

(US filing)

The Aquastar Regate. A timer with five dial apertures, a moving indicator and two coloured zones, designed to display the countdown to a yacht-race start. The patent that grounded the brand’s 36-year specialisation in regatta timing, the discipline Aquastar pivoted into during the quartz crisis.

Depth-measuring apparatus for underwater diving

Appareil de mesure de profondeur utilisable en plongée sous-marine

The electronic successor to Robert’s 1963 dial bathymeter, a wrist-mounted depth gauge using transducer-based pressure measurement instead of mechanical aneroid mechanics. The bridge between the mechanical dive instruments of the 1960s and the electronic dive computers that became standard in the 1980s.