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Watch History: 1950s Timepieces Every Collector Should Know

The decade that defined the tool watch, and the pieces that made it happen.

a group of watchesHodinkee, Bob’s Watches, Analog:Shift

By Johnny Brayson

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The 1950s was a time of tremendous change, and not just because of the advent of rock and roll and the spread of television. The Allied victory in World War II had transformed the United States into an economic behemoth and a global superpower, and US-funded reconstruction efforts led to a speedy and prosperous recovery in Western Europe, as well. This influx of cash in the hands of veterans looking for new adventures and hobbies, along with massive strides in technology made during the war effort, led to explosions in global exploration and new sporting activities.

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Everywhere you looked, it seemed risk-takers were diving to the depths of the oceans, summiting the world’s tallest mountains, hitting the racetrack at new speeds, venturing over the poles and taking to the skies with an eye toward space. Those partaking in these new adventures required purpose-built tools that could accompany them and stand up to whatever mystery lay around the next horizon, and the watch industry of the 1950s was more than ready to heed the call.

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The decade saw the invention of a number of now-standard watch styles that simply didn’t exist prior to the 1950s because there was no need for them. But necessity is the mother of invention, so when divers, pilots and climbers came calling, watch brands were ready with dedicated dive watches, GMT watches, flight computers, explorer’s watches and more.

Sports watches and tool watches began to supplant dress watches on shoppers’ wish lists in the ’50s, and a number of the most iconic watches in history first appeared on wrists during this mid-century window. We’ve selected the 15 watches from the 1950s that made the biggest impact on the industry, so take a look below, Daddy-O.

Omega Constellation

  • Year Introduced: 1952
  • Why It’s Significant: An accurate and beautiful dress watch, the “Connie” was Omega’s first flagship and was the de facto “nice watch” of Post-War professionals.

Sports watches and tool watches weren’t on the wrists of most men prior to the 1950s. If you wore a watch, it was a dress watch. And in the early 1950s, there was arguably no greater dress watch than the Omega Constellation, which during the decade became a symbol of the Swiss watch industry. Not only was the Constellation futuristic and stylish, with the most desirable references featuring faceted “pie pan” dials and angled “dog leg” lugs, but it was also an extremely precise chronometer.

The watch’s name was derived from the medallion on its caseback depicting eight stars above the Cupola of the Geneva Observatory, representing Omega’s success over the prior two decades at Kew-Tedding and Geneva Observatory competitions, where it broke two chronometer records for accuracy and won six first-place awards.

The watch gave Omega a head start as the brand looked to continue its status as the Swiss watch industry’s top dog for another decade, and even though Rolex increased the pressure considerably in the decade, the prestigious Connie would continue to lead Omega’s successful run through the next decade.

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Rolex Explorer

  • Year Introduced: 1953
  • Why It’s Significant: Became a symbol of endurance — and of Rolex’s marketing savvy — when an earlier prototype accompanied the first summiters of Mount Everest.

You probably recognize the Rolex Explorer today as the watch that climbed Mount Everest … but it wasn’t. You can chalk that myth up to Rolex and its unmatched marketing. By the 1950s, people were used to the bold strategy Rolex used to sell its watches, from displaying waterproof watches submerged in fishtanks in store windows to strapping a Rolex Oyster to the wrist of swimmer Mercedes Gleitze for her journey across the English Channel in 1927. But the Explorer took things up a notch because of the way it stretched the truth.

Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay became the first humans to ever reach the summit of Mount Everest in 1953. Rolex equipped the pair with prototype Rolex Oyster watches on the expedition — but the evidence is murky that either actually wore a Rolex on the summit, and Hillary claimed to have worn a Smiths watch to the mountaintop.

But Rolex released the Explorer to commemorate the expedition, and heavy marketing cemented the watch as “the Everest watch” in the public consciousness. The rugged and simple tool watch became an instant hit and created the template for modern explorer’s watches. Even 70 years later, it remains largely unchanged.

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Blancpain Fifty Fathoms

  • Year Introduced: 1953
  • Why It’s Significant: Considered the first modern dive watch, combining a rotating locking bezel, high water resistance, a double-sealed crown and high luminosity.

Three dive watches splashed onto the scene in 1953, but it’s generally accepted that Blancpain’s Fifty Fathoms was the first to do so (and it’s the only brand among the three to make that claim). Blancpain was a small and mostly unknown Swiss brand when it was approached by the French Navy in 1952 to make a professional dive watch for its new scuba combat unit. The brand rose to the challenge, creating an entirely new type of dive watch built to military specifications and establishing the template that we still recognize as a dive watch today.

Despite this accomplishment, Blancpain has remained relatively unknown as a brand, with most people still being unfamiliar with its history (it’s the oldest watch brand still in existence, dating back to 1735) up until it collaborated with Swatch on a Bioceramic version of the Fifty Fathoms in 2023 to mark the watch’s 70th anniversary.

But Blancpain deserves a lot of credit for doing something first, even if other brands were simultaneously and independently working on similar watches, and it remains one of the most important watches in history.

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Rolex Submariner

  • Year Introduced: 1953
  • Why It’s Significant: While it may have been created a few months or so after the Blancpain, Rolex’s first professional diver remains the most influential and copied watch to this day.

If you’re told to picture a watch in your mind’s eye, the Submariner is likely the first one to come to mind. The quintessential sports watch, the go-to luxury watch, the definitive dive watch — however you want to describe it, no watch of the 20th century has had a larger impact than the Sub.

Its universally beloved good looks, true dive watch functionality (it was developed concurrently with, and debuted shortly after, the Fifty Fathoms) and legendary robustness — it launched as the first dive watch to claim 100m water resistance — have all contributed to the Submariner being the most mimicked watch on the market even seven decades after it first appeared.

The Sub was favored by true men of action, but celebrities like Steve McQueen and Sean Connery helped further an equally adventurous and glamorous reputation by wearing the watch on screen in the early 1960s — the latter, of course, having an outsized impact by doing so as James Bond.

And while the sheen eventually wore off the Constellation and dress watches in general, the Rolex Submariner, even today, remains the “nice watch” du jour, the timepiece a person buys once they’ve “made it.” And that doesn’t seem likely to change for at least another 70 years.

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Zodiac Sea Wolf

  • Year Introduced: 1953
  • Why It’s Significant: The third modern dive watch to independently debut in ’53, the Sea Wolf was important for coming in at a much more accessible price point than its competitors.

Rounding out our trio of 1953’s innovative dive watches is the Zodiac Sea Wolf, admittedly the least impactful of all of them but still important for what it represented then and continues to represent today. Like the Fifty Fathoms and Submariner released the same year, the Sea Wolf was part of a new breed of purpose-built dive watch with a rotating timing bezel and a depth rating of around 100m.

But unlike those watches, it was made with the budget-conscious consumer in mind, with mid-century advertisements for the brand touting its comparative value in the Swiss watch industry. That value proposition, along with Zodiac’s marketing of the watch for use in “tropical countries,” led to explosive popularity among U.S. soldiers serving in the Vietnam War in the 1960s and ’70s.

Although the Sea Wolf’s contributions to history were largely forgotten in the ensuing decades as the brand fell on hard times — its unwanted association with the Zodiac Killer, who signed his letters with the brand’s logo and may have worn a Sea Wolf, didn’t help matters — the watch has received heightened attention this century thanks to Zodiac’s overall resurgence and its successful relaunch of the Sea Wolf line.

The idea of an affordable tool watch that’s just as capable as those produced by luxury brands remains a strong draw in the watch market of today, and the Sea Wolf of the 1950s was a pioneer in that regard.

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Glycine Airman

  • Year Introduced: 1953
  • Why It’s Significant: The first modern tool watch to simultaneously track two timezones, thanks to a rotating 24-hour bezel paired with a 24-hour dial.

World War II saw a massive uptick in innovation that soon trickled down to peacetime industry and consumer goods, with one of the most significant being the advent of the jet engine in 1939. By the 1950s, transatlantic jet passenger air travel was a reality, and pilots were desperate for watches that could simultaneously and easily track two time zones on a single dial.

Glycine was the first to answer the call, debuting the Airman in 1953. The watch featured a 24-hour dial and was the first to feature a 24-hour bezel that could be rotated, allowing the wearer to read two different times in 24-hour format at once.

Glycine was (and still is) a smaller Swiss brand, and the Airman never became a mainstream watch. But for those who relied on watches as tools, such as pilots, military men and even astronauts (NASA’s Pete Conrad wore an Airman to space on the Gemini 5 mission in 1965), the Airman was certainly on their radar.

Glycine still makes very faithful recreations of the original Airman today, and although its 24-on-24-hour format never really caught on, its iconic 24-hour steel bezel aesthetic has since been used by everyone from Seiko to Rolex.

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Rolex GMT-Master

  • Year Introduced: 1954
  • Why It’s Significant: The first-ever GMT watch, released a year after the Glycine Airman but became far more influential with its use of a fourth hand to track time on a 24-hour bezel.

Rolex in the 1950s was a lot like Apple in the 21st century. The brand usually wasn’t the first to market with new concepts, but its skillfulness as an innovator and mastery over marketing ensured that its watches would be the ones people remembered and lusted after.

It happened with the Explorer, it happened with the Submariner and it happened with this watch, the first-ever example of what we consider a GMT watch. Created in response to a call from Pan Am for a two-time zone watch for its pilots, the GMT-Master debuted after the Glycine Airman, but it had a far greater impact.

Instead of relying on a 24-hour dial to read the main time, the Rolex used a conventional (and easier to read for most people) 12-hour format. It also added a fourth hand that made one revolution every 24 hours, which, when paired with the rotating 24-hour bezel — executed in an eye-catching “Pepsi” color format of red and blue to distinguish daytime and nighttime hours — made it easier than ever to read two time zones at once.

The GMT-Master quickly became associated with Pan Am pilots and air travel in general, and its example of a two-time zone watch became the industry standard. Today, practically every major watch brand makes a GMT watch with a 24-hour bezel (quite a few of which are of the “Pepsi” variety) and a fourth GMT hand, and all of them can trace their lineage to the GMT-Master.

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Breitling Navitimer

  • Year Introduced: 1954
  • Why It’s Significant: The definitive modern pilot’s tool watch, recognizable for its busy layout and slide rule bezel that allows for numerous flight calculations.

With so many pilots suddenly flying all over the world in the 1950s, there arose a need for more dedicated tool watches to aid them in their aviation. In addition to the GMT, the other major pilot-specific watch genre that sprang up in the decade was the flight calculator. In 1952, Breitling was approached by the US Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association to come up with a new chronograph to aid its pilots on their journeys.

The brand came up with the Navitimer, which incorporated a logarithmic slide rule into the bezel. By transferring this flight computer to the wrist in conjunction with the chronograph, the watch could be used to calculate things like average speed, fuel consumption, the rate or climb of descent and to convert miles to kilometers.

The charmingly busy Navitimer showed just how much functionality could be worn on the wrist, and it has been a favorite of aviators, as well as Breitling’s undisputed flagship watch, for nearly 70 years now.

With all of the advanced digital instrumentation available to today’s pilots, the practical use of the Navitimer as a usable tool has obviously decreased — though this same case can be made for basically all mechanical watches — but its popularity has endured thanks to the charm of wearing an overbuilt analog co-pilot on the wrist that was conceived at a time when there was legitimate need for such a thing.

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Universal Genève Polerouter

  • Year Introduced: 1954
  • Why It’s Significant: The first major design from Gérald Genta, who arguably would go on to become the most important watch designer in history.

There are a lot of heavy-hitter luxury brands from today on this list, like Rolex, Omega and Breitling, but unless you’re a watch buff or are very into vintage watches, you may not be familiar with Universal Genève. In the mid-twentieth century, UG was a major Swiss brand, creating some of the most acclaimed watches of the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s.

The quartz crisis of the 1970s took the wind out of its sails, and while it technically still exists today under a Hong Kong-based holding company, the brand hasn’t been relevant for decades. But go back 70 years and the Polerouter (or Polarouter, as it was first called) was making waves.

The watch’s designer was a 23-year-old Gérald Genta. Arguably the most impactful watch designer of all time, Genta would go on to spark the luxury sports watch craze of the 1970s by penning the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak and Patek Philippe Nautilus, but two decades earlier, he crafted the sleek and beautiful Polerouter for Universal Genève. While dressy in appearance by today’s standards, the Polerouter was a tool watch through and through. It was designed for and issued to the pilots of Scandinavian Air Services, who were the first to fly commercial flights over the North Pole between the US and Europe.

These polar flights were subjected to stronger magnetic fields than usual, and their pilots needed a watch that would hold up against those forces as magnetism and watches do not mix. As such, the Polerouter featured not only an eye-catching aesthetic but also a high degree of magnetic resistance, making it as useful a tool as it was a stylish accessory — a balance few watches have struck as well before or since.

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EPSA Super Compressor

  • Year Introduced: 1956
  • Why It’s Significant: A revolutionary dive watch case design that was used by a number of brands, it increased water resistance the deeper it dove.

With the popularity of diving increasing exponentially in the 1950s, more and more people were diving with their watches. But many of the dive watches of the day were not able to withstand the pressures at great depths and could break if taken too deep underwater. That’s where Ervin Piquerez S.A., better known as EPSA, enters the picture. EPSA was not a watchmaker like the other brands on this list; it was a case maker.

Back in the mid-century, it was still common for watch brands to cobble together parts from a range of third-party suppliers — terms like “in-house” and “vertical integration” weren’t part of anyone’s vocabulary at the time. In 1956, EPSA patented its Super Compressor case. This case used increased pressure to its advantage, with a spring on the caseback that tightened the seal against the O-ring gasket as the pressure outside the watch increased.

Super Compressor watches also featured a dual-crown design that visually distinguished them from other dive watches. Their bezels were under the crystal and operated by one crown, with the other crown used for timekeeping. This design allowed for Super Compressors to be thinner and a bit dressier than traditional dive watches, and the style caught fire. Dozens of brands, from Bulova to Hamilton to Jaeger-LeCoultre, used Super Compressor cases for their dive watches throughout the 1950s and ’60s until watchmaking and case design technology reached the point where the spring-backed cases were no longer necessary.

But even today, the Super Compressor lives on in various forms. In 2020, Christopher Ward created the first functioning Super Compressor case in decades (its own design, not an EPSA case), and the Longines Legend Diver, introduced in 2007, thrives as a modern iteration of the twin-crown diver design seen on its own EPSA Super Compressor that first appeared in 1959.

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Rolex Day-Date

  • Year Introduced: 1956
  • Why It’s Significant: The first watch to display the full day of the week spelled out, it quickly became associated with world leaders and success.

You’re probably sick of Rolex by this point, but the 1950s really was the Rolex Decade. That’s mostly owed to the fact that it was a decade of tremendous exploration and dedicated tool watches designed to meet the moment — something at which Rolex has always excelled. But in the 1950s, just as today, Rolex wasn’t just a maker of tool watches.

The other half of the brand’s collection is composed of luxury dress watches, and none stand mightier than the Datejust. Nicknamed the “President” for how it eventually became popular among world leaders — LBJ was most responsible for perpetuating that reputation — the Day-Date, which has always been produced exclusively in full precious metals, has been the ultimate status symbol watch.

But the Day-Date was always more than just a showy timepiece for the rich and powerful. Like every other Rolex of the era, it also boasted some notable innovations, as it was the first watch to display the full day of the week spelled out on the dial alongside the date, hence the watch’s no-nonsense name.

This made it practical as well as attractive — an ongoing theme among the watches chosen for this guide — and represented another technical advancement in the fast-moving world of mid-century watchmaking. The Submariner may be the more popular watch, but the Day-Date will always be Rolex’s flagship, just as it was when it first turned heads in 1956.

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Omega Speedmaster

  • Year Introduced: 1957
  • Why It’s Significant: The first chronograph to feature an external tachymeter bezel, and a dozen years later, the first watch worn on the moon.

After the Rolex Submariner, the Speedmaster is arguably the most recognizable watch in the world — at least to watch enthusiasts. That’s largely because of its monumental status as the first watch worn on the moon’s surface, forever earning its place in history when Buzz Aldrin strapped his Speedy on his wrist before hopping off the lunar module during 1969’s historic Apollo 11 mission.

The Speedmaster’s association with space travel goes back even further than that. Astronaut Wally Schirra wore his own personal Speedmaster to space in 1962, and in 1965 NASA officially selected the Omega as the chronograph that would be issued to its astronauts for space flights after the watch outperformed competitors from Rolex, Breitling, Longines and others in a battery of tests.

The thing is, even if it weren’t for the Speedmaster’s now 60-year relationship with outer space, the watch would still be deserving of a spot on this list. The Speedy wasn’t initially designed with space travel in mind. It was launched as a racing chronograph, helping to pave the way for the motorsports craze that would greatly influence the watch world in the 1960s and 1970s.

The largest innovation from the Speedmaster was arguably its bezel, as it was the first watch to feature an external tachymeter bezel. This useful design feature, which made it easy to calculate speed using the chronograph, would become a hallmark of sporting chronographs moving forward. From the track to the moon and everywhere in between, the Speedmaster has been an icon for well over half a century.

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Omega Seamaster 300

  • Year Introduced: 1957
  • Why It’s Significant: Omega’s first professional dive watch, it transformed the Seamaster line from a dress watch into one of the world’s best-known sports watches.

With the tool watch race kicking into high gear in the 1950s, Omega found itself with some ground to make up as the end of the decade neared. The brand did so basically in one fell swoop, launching a “Professional” trio of watches in 1957, each designed for a different demanding task. The Speedmaster was one of them, the lesser-known Railmaster — an antimagnetic watch aimed at railroad staff — was another, and the third was the Seamaster 300.

At this time, the Seamaster had been around for nearly a decade, first debuting in 1948 as a water-resistant dress watch. But the more specialized hobbies of the 1950s required more focused tools, and the Seamaster became a dive watch with the advent of the Seamaster 300.

The Seamaster 300 wasn’t necessarily revolutionary. It was a contemporary of the Rolex Submariner, released a few years after as a deliberate competitor, and it didn’t really rewrite the book on dive watches. But it became immensely popular as Omega’s first professional dive watch, and in the ensuing decades, Seamaster divers have had stints as a mil-spec diver issued to the British Navy in the 1960s and ’70s and as the official James Bond watch since 1995.

Today, the Seamaster is likely the second best-known dive watch in the world after the Submariner, and while the line contains a number of vastly different watches — from the Aqua Terra to the Planet Ocean to the Ploprof — the Seamaster 300 is the one most responsible for making “Seamaster” a household name.

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Hamilton Ventura

  • Year Introduced: 1957
  • Why It’s Significant: The first electric wristwatch and a precursor to quartz watches that would debut over a decade later.

Quartz technology wouldn’t make its way into wristwatches until the very end of the 1960s when Seiko unveiled the Astron on Christmas Day, 1969. That day would change the watch industry forever, but more than a decade earlier, the non-mechanical revolution had already begun.

Hamilton‘s Ventura debuted in 1957 as the world’s first electric wristwatch, with the Caliber 500 movement that looked much like a mechanical movement but with a battery-powered electromagnet in place of the mainspring driving power to the balance wheel. This meant the watch required no winding at all, a first for the industry.

This futuristic movement required an equally futuristic case, and Hamilton tapped lauded auto designer Richard Arbib to design the Ventura. He came up with an angular space-age design that looked like nothing else on the market, and for a brief moment in time the Ventura became the “it” watch. Elvis Presley was the Ventura’s most famous wearer, as he owned one and wore it on-screen in 1961’s Blue Hawaii. Rod Serling wore one on TV while presenting The Twilight Zone.

Even decades later, the Ventura’s futuristic look was so distinct that it was chosen as the agents’ watches in the 1997 blockbuster Men in Black and all of its sequels. While innovative, the technology powering the Ventura proved unreliable, and the watch was out of production by the mid-1960s — several years before the arrival of quartz watches. Still, it was the first shot across the bow in what would eventually become a war between electronic and mechanical watchmaking.

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Seiko Laurel Alpinist

  • Year Introduced: 1959
  • Why It’s Significant: The first-ever sports watch produced by Seiko, a brand today known for its wide range of dive watches, field watches and chronographs.

Seiko is a massive company that today makes watches for every need, taste and budget. But for the first few decades of its existence (the brand created its first wristwatch in 1913), Seiko exclusively produced dress watches, much like other brands pre-1950s. Then, finally, at the end of the decade, Seiko released the Laurel Alpinist.

The watch was designed with mountaineers in mind and had robust features like a screw-in caseback to prevent dust incursion, easy-to-read luminous markers and a shock-resistant movement. While in a vacuum, it may look like nothing special, the Alpinist is significant for what it represents.

By Seiko’s own admission, the watch was the first Seiko designed for sports use. Given that today the brand is recognized for its countless contributions to sports watches — from the Seiko 5 series to Speedtimer chronographs to countless divers like the 62MAS, SKX, Tuna, Samurai, Turtle and others — it’s wild to think they can all essentially be traced back to this relatively simple Seiko from 1959.

The Alpinist has had a few periods of resurgence in the decades since and is now considered a classic product line among the Seiko faithful, but the true impact of its legacy can be seen across the company as a whole and the massive impact it’s had in popularizing sports watches over the past 60-plus years.

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