Timeline Watch
1969

Longines Diver Chrono Regatta

Prototype of world's first supersonic airliner. The Soviet-designed Tupolev Tu-144 made its first flight

1969 Longines Diver Chronograph Regatta ref. 8224-4, manual winding cal. Valjoux 72, 44mm. case and internal rotating bezel, this watch was re-edited recently and is very much in vogue now.

The Valjoux 72 is a three register column wheel manual wind chronograph movement which traces its origins back to the 1930s. The V72 was used in the Daytona Paul Newman and many other high end watches, but also in some lesser known brands; expect to pay a premium price for watches with this rare and celebrated movement.
Alone, it is worth more them US$500, often used as spare parts for more expensive watches, and I go further, an unmarked Valjoux 72 can be signed and turned into a Rolex, Breitling, Heuer, Jaeger and others, so be careful with identification.

Longines was founded in 1832, its winged hourglass logo is the oldest registered trademark for a watchmaker.
Longines provided timers used at the first modern Olympics in 1896.
In 1899, a Longines watch went to the North Pole with the Arctic explorer Luigi Amedeo of Savoy.
Charles Lindbergh, after his transatlantic flight, designed a pilot watch to help with air navigation. Built to his specifications, the Longines hour angle was introduced in 1931 and it is still produced today.
The company began to produce military issue watches for the second World War, most for the European forces.
Today Longines is owned by the Swatch Group.

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.