Archimede Sporttaucher watches

The Archimede SportTaucher is the dive watch of Archimede, the watch brand of Ickler, the family company Karl Ickler founded in Pforzheim, Germany, in 1924. Ickler has made watch cases since then, and every Archimede case is developed and manufactured in-house in Pforzheim.

The SportTaucher case is brushed stainless steel, 41.5 mm across and 12 mm thick, with a screw-down crown at four o'clock behind a crown guard. The unidirectional bezel carries a 60-minute dive scale with a luminous marker at 12. The SportTaucher of 2010 ran on the Swiss ETA 2824-2 automatic; Archimede's current SportTaucher R 41 uses the SW 200-2 Power+ calibre with a 65-hour power reserve and is water-resistant to 30 ATM.

The time-only references share the 41.5 mm steel case and differ in dial and strap. There are black, blue and white dials: the white dial has black markings, the blue one orange and white markings. Straps run from leather and rubber to mesh and a steel bracelet with a safety clasp and a fold-out extension for wearing it over a wetsuit. The reference shows which: B after UA8974 means the bracelet (UA8974B-TS-A3.1 is the white dial on steel), BM the mesh (UA8974BM-TB-A5.5 in blue), and on the strap versions the final digit separates rubber (.2) from leather (.5).

The SportTaucher GMT, references beginning UA8974-GS and UA8974B-GS, keeps the same 41.5 mm case and a black dial but replaces the dive scale with a rotating 12-hour bezel.