Teddy Baldassarre
Squale Watches Review: A Dive Watch Pioneer
[toc-section heading="Squale Overview"] Squale is a historic manufacture with a particular specialty in the realm of dive watches. The company’s heritage is deeper than you may realize, as it extends beyond its own footprint, touching an extensive list of partners that helped to shape the dive-watch genre as we know it today. The story of Squale is one of intrigue, and while it became a well known case supplier through the ‘60s and ‘70s, the Swiss brand also boasted a collection of its own designs that hold as well today as they did then. Understanding Squale means taking a step back into the era that birthed it, an era defined by the burgeoning sport of recreational diving as well as the advent of military diving operations. If you’re a fan of dive watches and the history of their use, Squale is a brand that should be on your radar thanks to its plentiful contributions. Beyond that, collectors will find a vast array of designs in the brand’s modern catalog that both break new ground and preserve the best portions of its history. In this overview, we’ll connect all the dots from then to now. [toc-section heading="History and Heritage"] Squale was founded by Charles von Büren in 1959 in the beautiful lakeside town of Neuchâtel, Switzerland. While that’s the official date, von Büren had been assembling watches under his own name for the prior decade, meaning he brought some pedigree to the name from the get-go. The modern dive watch genre was in its ...