Timeline Watch
1963

Movado  SubSea Chronodiver

Washington-to-Moscow "hot line"communications link opens, designed to reduce risk of accidental War

1963 Movado SubSea Chronodiver ref. 19041, manual winding movement cal. M95. 40mm. case, 600 ft waterproof, I believe the bezel insert is not original in this watch but it’s a very hard to find watch and it’s a keeper anyway.

Look closely at the textured sub-dials, note the unique “kris” hands of the chronograph registers, a Movado design hallmark. They almost never survive the passage of time, so to find a watch with them still in place is unusual. Note also that the minutes sub-dial goes to 60, which I believe is unique to the 95M movement as well, a feature developed at Movado’s request by Frederic Piguet.
After the fusion with Zenith the M95 movement had been replaced by the Martel-Zenith 146 (in fact a similar Super Sub Sea version exists but the 3 sub counters are more spaced from each other.
The M90/M95 movement is the first modular chronograph ever produced, giving the lead by at least 30 years with respect to any competitor.

Movado is an American luxury watchmaker best known for its Museum Watch designed in 1947. Movado was originally founded in 1881 in Switzerland by Achilles Ditesheim. In 1983, the company was purchased by Gedalio Grinberg, a Cuban-born Jew who fled Fidel Castro’s Marxist Revolution in 1960 with his family.

The first ever specialized diving watches were the Panerai, used by the Italian frogmen in the Second World War. Actually they were Rolex 3646s with special dials made by Panerai.

Right after WWII, two French combat diving corps started to search for a military grade diving watch, big and easy to read underwater, hermetically sealed and capable to absorb shocks this helped Blancpain to develop the legendary Fifty Fathoms introduced in 1953. The transformation of the simple water resistant watch to the tool diver watch happened at that exact point. The next year Rolex launched perhaps the most famous diver watch of them all, the Rolex Submariner; from that point most of the Swiss companies started to shift their attention towards the sea, trying to produce reliable underwater-capable wristwatches.