Blancpain

Some other important thoughts Emilio!!!!

 

Thank you very much for your pictures, I didn't noticed these hands before, but I was sure that this kind of hands must have existed Emilio, because the 2003 anniversary edition uses the same (but only the true 'series 1' edition)!!

What I do not understand is that, in the "Lettres du Brassus No.3" from Blancpain, they show a different Blancpain model beeing the first ever released! Here the original text from the magazine: -------- Finally, however, the two French naval officers came into contact with Mr. Fiechter of Blancpain. With Fiechter’s personal passion for and fascination with diving, he needed little convincing. Blancpain quickly agreed to develop the timepiece for the Ecole des nageurs de combat (Combat Diving School) which Maloubier and Riffaud commanded. Maloubier describes his first meeting with Blancpain: “Finally a small watch company, Blancpain, agreed to develop our project which envisioned a watch with a black dial, bold large numerals and clear markings: triangles, circles, squares; a rotatable exterior bezel which repeated the markings of the dial. We wanted at the start of a dive to be able to set the bezel opposite the large minute hand in order to mark the time. We wanted each of the markings to shine like a star for a shepherd.” -------- The French Combat Divers Fifty Fathoms was the first ever released professional diving watch by Blancpain, with triangles, circles and squares but without the 3/6/9/12 indexes!!! It had the common hands without the radium triangle to the extreme, a big crown, the big triangle bezel, the non-aligned Rotomatic-Incabloc writings and the most significent feature (IMO the first big 'mistake' by Blancpain) THE NUMBER 30 IN THE BEZEL WAS WRONGLY INVERTED!!!!!!!!! Why Blancpain did not copy this very first Maloubier/Riffaud Fifty Fathoms for the anniversary edition? I am certain that the 2003 edition was a copy of the first 'official - civilian' Blancpain Fifty Fathoms?

It's so hard to get through it!! I am sure that the hands on my FF are not replaced. I think that it was made specially like that, because in professional diving, after setting the bezel, only the minute hand is important, so only this one needs special luminous parts to the extreme !! But there is still the aligned dial on my FF, was this made between the Maloubier/Riffaud and the first official FF or later or was it ordered specialy like that by another military unit? Was it a prototype before the first official FF or was it simply a later model of the FF? If yes, why Blancpain changed the writings on the dial? By the way, the official name of the 41mm diameter version was " Fifty Fathoms PG1" and was offered from 1956 to 1964 in the german dive catalogue from Barakuda for the price of 198-228 DM (Deutsche Mark) The 34mm version was named Fifty Fathoms PF1 and was offered for exactly the same price as his big brother, but was available until 1966 (price raised up to 246 DM in '66). I still don't know what PF1 and PG1 stands for :-(

You see Emilio, sometimes I wish I would collect stamps! That would be much easier! ;-) best, my friend ----- P.S. Sorry and Thank you Jeff for using/stealing your picture This message has been edited by claude.f on 2010-01-07 19:31:21

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