Episode 174 - All about the Helium Release Valve

Published on Wed, 23 Feb 2022 19:58:18 -0800

Synopsis

The episode discusses the helium release valve, a specialized watch feature designed to prevent the crystal from exploding off the watch due to pressure changes when used in saturation diving environments. The history and controversy around who invented this technology first, Rolex or Doxa, is explored. While providing a technical explanation of how the helium release valve works and its necessity for a tiny portion of the population engaged in saturation diving, the hosts also highlight the silliness and drama surrounding this niche horological innovation.

They also briefly mention other podcast recommendations like "Serial" and "The Trojan Horse Affair", as well as Andrew's new obsession with the UFC 4 video game.

Transcript

Speaker
Andrew Hello, fellow watch lovers, nerds, enthusiasts, or however you identify. You're listening to 40 in 20, the Watch Clicker podcast with your host, Andrew. I'm a good friend, Everett. Here, we talk about watches, food, drinks, life, and other things we like. Everett, how are you? You know. Fluster, that was maybe the most chaotic intro we've ever had. so much activity that you guys will never know happened, because it sounded clean. If I weren't admitting to it right now, you would never have known.
Everett Yeah, you don't have to do us dirty like that, man. I did it. It was chaos.
Andrew I almost forgot that I was supposed to introduce the show. Like, what do we do?
Unknown Oh, God, I've never done this before.
Everett You know, the nice thing about the intro is oopsies are like the easiest thing in the world to fix. You just press the record button once, press the record button again and start over again.
Andrew And we're both usually pretty sober.
Everett That's right. That versus the outro where a we're not usually sober, um, where we have to like just sort of pause and then come back in. And then I have a, like an editing mission. If you remember to write it down to carve it out. Yeah. Uh, No, I'm doing really well. I, you know, just 2222 today. Happy Tuesday. Tuesday, exactly. Uh, it will be, um, it will be no longer 2222 when they hear this. No, we're speaking to you from the past. Yeah.
Andrew I'm sorry. It's better here. Probably.
Everett Let's hope it's better there. I hope so. I mean, let's just be optimistic for once. Yeah.
Andrew Tomorrow's better than today. This today's almost over.
Everett Um, Andrew, how are you? You're wearing a lovely shirt. I love this shirt.
Andrew I have a, I'm wearing a authentic McNeil tartan Pendleton wool shirt. It is so good. Itchy, but it's a wool shirt, so it should be a little itchy.
Everett You know, the thing about Pendleton wool is usually it becomes not itchy pretty quickly in my experience.
Andrew You got to break it in though. There's a break in period as with all well-made garments. Yeah.
Everett There's a break in period. Yeah. It's not like those army blankets though, which will just, which wouldn't even be comfortable horse blankets.
Andrew Like you wouldn't want to do that to the horse.
Unknown Yeah.
Everett Do you own any of the thick Pendleton wool blankets? Like the, just one. We've got one, and I really, really love it. And I'm always like, I want to get more of these because it's beautiful. You know, so in some respects, it's almost like decoration. A tapestry? Yeah, that's right. But I don't actually know what we would do with them.
Andrew No, someone got it for us as like a picnic blanket. And I was like, the fuck you will? You're not going to put that on the ground outside?
Everett Eh.
Unknown No.
Andrew Use your shit. Yeah, wrap up in it, but you're, I don't know. It's, it's a, for those of you unfamiliar with Pendleton wool, Pendleton. Wait, wait, wait, wait.
Everett Who is unfamiliar with Pendleton?
Andrew I don't know. There may be somebody out there. Pendleton is a wool manufacturer provider. They do woolen goods, clothes, shirts, pants, blankets, oftentimes with, uh, first nation patterns. They do a lot of tartan patterns. And they're based out of Oregon. So I think perhaps they're maybe a bigger deal to us than people across the country.
Everett I don't think that's true. I think Pendleton sort of rose to national prominence back in the 60s by way of the Beach Boys, and now it's like an international thing. I wouldn't disagree, but I'm just saying for those unfamiliar. Like Columbia Sportswear. Yeah. People know about that? What's the name of the Columbia Sportswear lady, Gert Boyle? I don't know. So Gert Boyle's office used to be right under my mom's office when I was a little kid and she was super nice. She would be like, Oh, how you doing Everett? Like I would see her on the sidewalk all the time and she knew who I was. Nice. And it was like, they were a mega company at the time is the eighties, right? They were a mega company at the time, but uh, not like they are now.
Andrew And she hadn't somebody with an office above her.
Everett Uh, yeah. So they had it. I think it was their original retail location. Okay. And they still had like a showroom there, but it wasn't a retail location at that point.
Unknown Yeah. Yeah.
Andrew So anyway, yeah. Sam got me this shirt for Christmas tonight. I love it. It's supposed to get very cold tonight. So I didn't want to just like have a t shirt because it's also warm in my house. So I was like, this is perfect. Nice woolen layer.
Everett Do it to it. Yeah. Do it to it. Um, we are, we are not converting to a wool or a sportswear podcast.
Andrew We might. There's the, you know, the day is young and the future is bright.
Everett Lots of things could happen. Maybe after this episode we will. Yeah. Uh, because we're talking about the, maybe the most terrible subject we've ever talked about, but we are talking about watches. I'll say that for the record. We are talking about watches. Um, but perhaps the silliest topic we've ever talked about. I can't even blame you because it's a hundred percent my fault that we're talking about this.
Andrew Yeah. You gave me this idea and you're like, can we make an episode out of this? I was like, yeah, we can make an episode out of this. Here's how we're going to do it. And it's, I think it's going to be a fun episode. This is very much, this isn't quite like our deep dives.
Everett That's yeah, that's, that's too much. I'm not going to fist bump you.
Andrew Okay. Uh, this isn't quite like our, our, our stuff you should know about episodes. Uh, it's closer to it. It's, it's, uh, it's a light version of that. So today we're going to talk about the helium release valve, the helium escape valve. Helium is a hard word for me, so I'm helium. Helium is what comes out a lot for me. Uh, so. That's what we're going to talk about today. Like nuclear. The HRV. Magnificent. That's another hard word for me. I don't use it. I don't write it. It just is a word that exists, but it's just trash.
Everett It's over there. Magnificent. Yeah. Okay. How do you say magnificent?
Andrew I know how to say it. You say it magnificent, but if I get speaking quickly, I mess it up and you'll, if you I won't do it in front of you because it's not a word that I use. It's not in my vocabulary.
Everett That's why I want you to tell me what the mistake is.
Andrew I don't know. I can't do it on purpose. It just happens.
Everett It's like a disaster. It feels a little bit like you blue balled me on this one. Maybe I did.
Andrew So, the helium release valve. Can we settle on what we're going to call it?
Everett Yeah, we're going to call it the helium release valve, also known as helium escape valve. The Herve. The Herve or the Heve. We're going to call it the Herve.
Andrew I like the Heve more.
Everett The Heve? That's my nickname.
Andrew So.
Everett When I'm overweight.
Andrew Heavy heavy.
Everett What up Heve?
Andrew That was a good one. So first we're going to dive into why the Herve exists. I'll answer a question up front. We'll bottom line up front this.
Everett Wait, wait, wait. I know we just agreed on it, but can we agree not to call it the herb? Okay. Okay.
Andrew Why it exists. I'm going to bottom line up front here.
Unknown Bluff.
Andrew There is maybe one listener to this show and maybe about 100 to 200 people on the planet who actually need this function.
Everett No, statistically speaking, there are zero. There are zero listeners of this show.
Andrew Yes statistically you don't need it and globally like less than a thousand people definitely but probably like 200 or so people.
Everett I think 300 so so okay so so what it is the helium release valve is a device that was implemented in watches and sixes we'll put more more spin on that later to solve a very specific problem which is the introduction of helium to a watch at compression, which upon decompression expands and explodes crystals usually off of watches. Which is super fun. And I don't understand why people wouldn't like that. The only time that happens is when helium is introduced environmentally to the oxygen that you're breathing and gets in the watch. So, so that is called saturation diving. And in the United States right now, there's something like 3,500 commercial divers. And of those 3,500 commercial divers, only about 300 of them are saturation divers. It is like the most elite type of commercial diving and fewer than probably a thousand people internationally do it. So.
Andrew Saturation diving. Ultra long stays at between very deep and ultra deep depths, wherein the person, usually a team of peoples, are submerged in some kind of habitat or some kind of living space and exist under compression for the duration of their project.
Everett Usually about a month is the typical sat
Andrew Tour and and the reason for that is because when the body is working at such depths There's too much time wasted in ascent and descent there had to be a way to Hold a person at that depth so they could work And not work without being in the water the whole time so the the helium release valve is for The I think a common misconception is that it's just for super depth like super deep diving It's not even for super deep diving. You don't need a helium release valve to strap a watch to the outside of a submersible and sink that bitch. You need it only to exist in these saturation environments. And the reason these saturation environments exist is because your body can only absorb so much oxygen at depth. So other gases are introduced into your breathing atmosphere. Most famously nitrogen. Nitrogen, helium, and your body absorbs that and it doesn't affect your body, but it allows your body to continue to process. Oxygen fills the space that, that you need.
Everett Yeah. So I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I think I, I made an interruption there and didn't make it clear. So an, an standard diving condition. So say at, uh, you know, perhaps even as little as, uh, 90 meters. which is a pretty typical, very deep depth for scuba divers, perhaps, or even, or even surface supplied divers to go. That's a, that's a really, a really deep depth. So we think about 200, 500 meter watches, et cetera. But, but in reality, a scuba diver is never going to go anywhere near that deep. Shouldn't don't do that. 90 is like. crazy. 90 meters is crazy. And, and if you're scuba diving, like with a wetsuit or perhaps even a dry suit on you within about an hour, your body's going to take on toxic levels of nitrogen and you run into all sorts of potential problems, namely death, but also upon decompression, decompression sickness, AKA the bends. Yeah. So, so, What you need is for certain projects, you know, a dive, for instance, at a hundred meters or so over a long period of time, you need the ability to be down there longer, or you're going to get sick. So, so mixed gas or what we call saturation diving was invented, what the first part of the 20th century or conceived of first part of it.
Andrew I think I don't remember the date on it.
Everett I think like 1938 is the first successful mixed gas dive.
Andrew Um, what a, what an American hero right there. And like, yeah, I'll breathe whatever that poison is. Let's do this. Yeah. And put me down. So we get that.
Everett So you replace, yeah, sorry. You replace all the, all the potentially toxic gases with helium. Basically it's helium with, it's mostly helium with a tiny bit of oxygen.
Andrew Cause that's all you need. The helium takes up all the space in your cells that would otherwise be infiltrated by Nitrogen because oxygen also can be can be toxic.
Everett So both the nitrogen in standard o2 as well as as well as Oxygen can be really harmful.
Andrew There is still a decompression period But it's not as potentially fatal as decompression with nitrogen in your blood
Everett And in saturation diving, modern saturation diving, certainly you're doing it less often.
Andrew Yeah. And, but for a very long time. So anyway, that's the atmosphere that you're existing in a high helium, low oxygen environment. And because of the size and structure of helium, it is displacing the atmosphere that would normally under not pressure exist inside your watch. And now we have a problem. Because on decompression, the watches are sealed tight enough to not let it out quickly enough to prevent explosions.
Everett Yeah. Yeah. So it gets in over the course of about a week. Helium smallest atom.
Unknown Is it?
Everett Helium is the smallest atom, both in terms of mass, but also volume. I've met some small atoms.
Andrew I don't know.
Everett And so helium, being such a small atom, has the ability to get inside the watch certainly more easily than an H2O molecule could. H2O molecule, relatively giant. Helium atom, tiny. So helium's actually just squishing right on past that double viton gasket and getting in your watch. Over about five days, I think is what they say.
Andrew And then as pressure changes, can explode. So now we have a problem. We've got exploding watches. Now the easiest solution is you just open the crown and let it out and you just don't close it back up till you come back up. So there's the first helium release valve.
Unknown Yeah.
Andrew You just turn off your watch during decompression.
Everett And the problem is in the, you know, fifties and sixties as guys are doing this, notably on the, On the U S Navy sea labs experiments, their, you know, decompression is there's stuff going on and they've got to be focused on other perhaps work things and they forget to do it. So you forget to open up your crown. That pressure doesn't, that helium expands, doesn't have the ability to escape fast enough and kablamo. And no crystal to the face. Every time, it makes me so mad every time that happens.
Andrew You get a black eye. One thing I didn't find, I wanted to see pictures of these exploded watches and see if it was just a gasket, like if just the crystal was just pressed out. Is the bezel damaged? Is the movement damaged? Or is it just a pain in the ass to press it all back together?
Everett Yeah, so Bob Barth, I think, is the guy, the Navy Sealab, sort of legendary Navy Sea Labs diver, he's the guy credited with coming actually taking this issue to a Rolex executive. Probably someone who was there to sort of pimp Rolex products to the Sea Lab divers because they were kind of superstars in their time. And Bob Barth is credited for saying, hey, I got this problem. We got this problem. And I think that the problem they described and the type of crystals that would have been prevalent at the time were acrylic crystals, right? So the fitment was probably friction and more focused on keeping water out versus keeping anything in. So I assume it just sort of plop, bloop, bloop.
Unknown Okay.
Andrew It was a shorter episode than I expected it to be. So we've got the problem. There's some sub-problems in the solution.
Everett Yeah.
Andrew And kind of an interesting story. Some intrigue, if you will.
Everett Some intrigue. Maybe not quite a Huygens intrigue or an Everest watch intrigue.
Andrew Maybe close to Everest watch. Maybe close. It's just that more people care about Mount Everest than Sat diving, which is reasonable because less people die saturation diving than climbing Mount Everest. So why would you want to be a saturation diver recreationally? It doesn't seem fun. You see you, you're breathing helium. So you sound like you're breathing helium for the entire month that you're down there.
Everett Yeah. You know, there's, there's some irony here, which Um, is maybe not super obvious, but, but the first is that when we think of diving, well, I should say when I think of diving, I think of scuba diving, scuba diving, where you put on a wetsuit or a dry suit and you've got your oxygen tank and mask and there's sharks and treasure, um, always treasure, almost certainly treasure. Um, when we talk about commercial diving, that's not really what we're talking about. We're talking about oftentimes hard hat equipped. surface supply, um, construction, both horizontal and vertical, um, sewage excavation, oil welding, um, at, at many different depths. Right. So, so, um, uh, some oftentimes commercial diving is done perhaps with your head, not even submerged. So scuba diving is recreational.
Andrew There is commercial scuba diving. For sure. But when we're talking commercial diving, we're talking like construction grade, like engineering. Yeah.
Everett And when we're talking about saturation diving, we're talking about diving that's probably not even wet. So specifically you and your watch most of the time in a saturation diving environment are going to be dry. You're either going to be in a diving bell or um, an environment on like a support vessel, you're going to be a pressure for a long time, but you probably aren't going to be wet all that much of the time. And certainly never really exposed to the water. You may have a watch that's exposed to the water if you're, you know, for brief periods of time, but you're going to be dry. Your body is going to be dry the entire time.
Andrew Probably sweaty and cold all at once.
Everett So the issue, the issue is not one of water intrusion. Explicitly. And in fact, water intrusion is probably not really that great of a possibility.
Andrew And if it is, it's the least of your concerns related to your watch.
Everett So just to be clear, a helium release valve has nothing to do with scuba diving.
Andrew Almost any kind of snark commercial diving, snorkeling, free diving, ball skin diving, none of it.
Everett None of it. This is a totally different thing.
Andrew Yes. And I think that's important because we, I think we conflate the two. Oh, I do. 500 meters of water resistance and a helium release valve. I can go so deep. Well, yeah, but the two are unrelated. The two are wholly unrelated. Put a tachymeter on this dress watch.
Everett Yeah. Um, okay. So we've now talked about the basics of saturation diving. Yes. We've talked about the problems.
Andrew as they face your watch, that your watch faces.
Everett So the legend has it that, well, there's two prevailing theories. One of the prevailing theories is that Doxa is the inventor of the helium release valve. And the usual evidence for that is that in fact, Doxa released the first publicly available watch with a helium escape valve helium release valve in the 300t conquistador so released in 1967 yep i believe at or around that same 69 excuse me 69 yeah rolex rolex did not release its sea dweller until about two years after that in 1971 however So, so DOXA folks will be, and I guess there are DOXA folks, there are folks, there are folks for everyone who think this is an important conversation to have. And so here we are. DOXA folks will say, well, look, the, the, the proof is in the pudding, but there's more to this story. And so we'll just say right now, um, the inspiration for this podcast was a Periscope article, Periscope. If you don't know what Periscope is, just go look Periscope up. It is the link in the show, but also P E R E Z Perez cope periscope. Um, this guy talks a lot about sort of fake Panerais at auction houses. And he, he talks, he's really sort of a very, very good watch journalist, but he has this tilt towards the controversial or unpacking, um, unpacking sort of dirty secrets. And he's kind of an expose type
Andrew He loves putting people's dirty laundry out to dry.
Everett This is the dirty laundry. So I think he's a real gem, a treat of the watch world. But this article is, or this article, this podcast was inspired by a Periscope article on this subject, which will be in the show notes and you can go, you can and should go read it. Thanks, Mr. Cope. Thank you. I don't think it's Cope. Hard to say.
Unknown I don't know.
Everett It's probably not all that hard to say.
Andrew I don't know. He's, he's, I think he was born in Germany, so his name is hard to say. So here's the number one wrinkle when it comes to firsts. Conquistador became available in 1969. There is a Rolex patent for this technology. in 1967. So it took four years between Rolex's patent and their first to market product. So is it a wrinkle?
Unknown Yeah. I don't know.
Everett Yeah. You know, this is, this is one of those things that it seems like it's going to be a really Sexy controversy and it winds up being a a little vague. On reflection there, there may be not any really good answers, but also Rolex is covering it up. Yeah, but maybe also a little sort of unsatisfying because. What it seems, it seems that both Doxa and Rolex were independently working on this thing. It also seems like perhaps Doxa wanted to be working with Rolex and perhaps what perhaps was, was friend zoned on this issue. Periscope, the Periscope article we talked about shows lots of pictures from the U S Navy sea labs, I think is the sea labs three, um, of various divers wearing both Doxa 300 T's and Rolex prototype sea dwellers. Um, ostensibly both of which would have been equipped with a helium release valve at the same time. At the time, there was an executive from DOXA who stated publicly, we were working with Rolex on this equipment. But there's no actual evidence that that's the case. And notably, DOXA's technology in the Conquistador was different than Rolex's technology used in the first run of Sea-Dwellers. Rolex used a pretty rudimentary technology. You can see it's just like three parts. It's a plunger and a hole and a flat spring. And Doxie used a more complicated, much more like a modern helium release valve. And so it's... That's, first they were using different technologies. If you're working on this together, why are you using different technologies? Doxa notably never applied for a patent. They never marked any of their watches as patent pending. We understand that the Swiss patent office was incredibly inefficient at this time.
Andrew And busy at the time, the 60s were. pretty big on horology and other patents, but.
Everett So, so DOCSIS sort of claimed a fame here and certainly they professed, Hey, this is, we did this first and we were working with Rolex. That seems like it's maybe not all that likely. Um, notably not suggesting that there is a patent pending using different technology, never applying for a patent and further. DOCSIS releases the 300T conquistador to the public. Probably about 300 of them were made. Eight of them maybe still exist. And they don't make another helium-release valve-equipped watch until 2010.
Andrew They're busy. Or it just really wasn't theirs. So I guess then the question is, where does it come from? Because we don't see that similar... I mean, we see that similar technology down the line. Did someone just from the future drop it off? Because Rolex clearly had the infrastructure to develop and produce. Because after 1971, the Sea-Dweller was being sent out in piles to Sea Labs divers and to various professional divers and to Comex divers and to all these other divers as like, hey, you can have it on loan. Tell us how it works. field test this for us, and we don't see that proliferation with DOXA.
Unknown Yeah.
Andrew Which is weird.
Everett Well, not only is that weird, but it seems like perhaps DOXA had maybe a little bit of a little brother syndrome going on at the time, and maybe a little bit of a loose relationship with the truth. in these regards. Another thing that happens sort of in the 60s, mid 60s, is Doxit introduces their now famous no decomp split bezel and basically suggests that they did this first. However, in 1965, Eterna patents the no decomp split bezel, no decompression, no deco split bezel. And And Doxa kind of wants to take credit for that as well. So, you know, we've talked the Everest episode in particular, we've talked about sort of the truth was, you know, what you said the truth was, and the winner was the one who convinced the most people of what the truth was. It seems like Doxa was not alone in this effort, but certainly they were willing to sort of say, Hey, this is ours.
Andrew Oh, we didn't know that you did it too. Yeah.
Everett Or even just, it doesn't matter that you did it too, because we did it, and we did it first, and prove me wrong.
Andrew Exactly. There's some other interesting drama in that time period between Rolex and Doxa, and that kind of just muddies the waters. Because at this time, in the 60s, These Swiss brands are pretty incestuous on who they're hiring. You could be an executive for one brand one day, and then the following year you're an executive for another brand. So there's all kinds of, and everyone knows that if you're an executive for one brand and you move to another brand, even though you've signed an NDA, you honor that NDA because you signed it. There's all this incestuous hiring and moving at the executive levels and almost certainly within development levels that everyone's inadvertently sharing information. And you've got to think that there's also hiring practices built around, oh I want to hire that guy because I know he knows what they're doing and he won't bring the technology but he'll bring the knowledge and that's almost as good. And it's just, I don't know, for such a weird and specialized piece of equipment that has marginal at best value in the watch industry. That's a lot of turmoil over it.
Everett Yeah. You know, it seems the story, this sort of lineage story here reminds me a little of the auto minor chronograph story, right? You know, it's, is it the Seiko? Is it Zenith? Who, who's the first? And the reality is, um, Probably both Doxa and Rolex did a similar thing at approximately the same time. Arguably, Doxa did it better earlier. We know Rolex had more money. We know that Bob Barth, who's kind of credited as having the idea, took his idea for a valve specifically to Rolex and not to Doxa. We know that the Sealabs guys were wearing both Doxas. um sea dwellers so so it maybe seems like it's less about who did it first um then we all then we all we all want the the victor right who who is the victor it kind of seems like both things were happening rolex getting the patent in probably is the most legally most significant item uh there but yeah they're you're right they're all just kind of doing this stuff Everybody's working on this thing. They're all working on simultaneously. They all know everybody else is working on it. So at some point it becomes marketing and production delays and these really benign factors that decide the victor.
Andrew Meanwhile, a bunch of other watch brands were competing to get to the moon. And these brands are like, How can I equip these 500 people with a watch?
Everett Right. Yeah. Yeah. And, and, and certainly eclipsed, you know, you know, diving at the time is eclipsed by the space race in some really important ways, right? Who cares about the ocean when we're going to fucking space? Interestingly, the oceans may be a lot more interesting than space.
Andrew And, but you know, not much has changed. It's interesting. Yeah. Yeah. So we've got the drama. We've got the thing.
Everett And the drama's maybe womp womp.
Andrew Yeah, the drama's a little womp womp, right? I mean, it's an interesting story that, again, Rolex is tied up in a who did it first, who did it bestest.
Everett Who did this bestest. Exactly. And also the device is maybe a little womp womp.
Andrew Yeah, the device is certainly womp womp. Yeah. It just it seems it's fishy to me that Rolex is always involved in these. Why isn't any other brand the common denominator in these weird cover ups or misunderstandings or the documentation's been lost? Kind of scandals.
Everett Yeah. Yeah. It's hard to say. You know, I do think that Rolex is a little bit like That guy who we all knew when we were like in middle school or whatever, who like just always got the credit for everything, right? It's like, you're kind of dumb. You're always late. You never work as hard as anybody else. And you always, you still get the credit for everything.
Andrew I think they have an army of Swiss assassins. Yeah. And like their own, their own black op team that goes into the patent office and removes single documents.
Everett So it should be stated also that this is not the only way to deal with this problem. There are so what we've discussed thus far is what's called an automatic helium release valve or helium escape valve, which is automatic, meaning it lets the pressure do the work. The pressure does the work. The way it releases the pressure is As the gases expand, it compresses a spring, typically, which opens the valve. This is a one-way valve. So if the pressure is coming from the outside, the valve will be closed. If the pressure is coming from the inside, it will push out and release. And it does it automatically. You don't need to do anything. Famously, Omega is also involved in this quest. They do, at the same time as the 300T Conquistador and the Sea-Dweller being developed, Omega is also developing a fairly famous watch in the Ploprof. So Ploprof, short for plongeur professional, meaning professional diver. In French. The Ploprof is, does two things to solve this, combat this problem.
Andrew One. Well, it does a third and really important thing. It also replaces some of the weights on your weight belt.
Everett So one. It helps you with descent. Two, it actually incorporates a different level of seal. The way the case is built and the way the seals are done more effectively keep helium atoms out of the inside of the watch. And then it also has a manual release valve, so not dissimilar to the function of a crown. You actually manually equalize the watch both up and down by way of a big button on the side. What is that button? What does that do? That is your manual helium escape valve.
Andrew Then just for pushing?
Everett Just for the pushing. Yeah. And Seiko also, Seiko was also doing a similar thing by way of brute force, right? So their monocoque cases, Seiko's monocoque cases are meant to just prevent the gases from getting in or out. So in a saturation environment perhaps, if you don't have an equalized watch, you can't use chronograph buttons, you can't open or close, so you can't really set your watch if it's a brute force watch like a Seiko because you just can't.
Andrew We have to incrementally. That's right. Yeah. You, it has to be part of your, uh, your pressurization checklist.
Everett That's right. Either you equalize it by way of opening the crown during descent and or during compression and decompression or you don't.
Andrew Yeah. You don't, there's no going back on it. That's right.
Everett That's right. Um, so, so there is that aspect of this thing. Um, The helium release valve is, I think, important because it's just really a simple, elegant, innocuous, you know, the Ploprof, there's nothing innocuous about a Ploprof or really even a Marine Master. The solutions, the helium release valve solutions are neat. They're svelte and diverse. And, you know, much like Doxo, we like these, we like these mechanical solutions. that work as well as the brute force solution.
Andrew It's fascinating the way watch companies take on problems. Who gives a shit about saturation diving problems? Watch companies. For whatever reason, a watch is a necessity And you can't have a digital timer or something on the wall. You got to have a watch and watch company saw that problem and they're like, we can fix that. We can solve that problem. And they did it. And everyone's got a slightly different take on it. And Ball has a new, not a new, but Ball's got a helium escape that they pioneered kind of at their, at their own timeline. And it's just, it's cool. It's a, it's a totally useless technology to 99% of the market. Maybe even more than 99%. No, way more than 99%. People buying watches of these type, who are dropping some money on watches. But they do it anyway. Companies spend money to improve this technology or maintain this technology.
Everett Yeah, technology is in and of itself marketable, whether someone needs tech or not, especially a sexy tech like something for commercial diving. That is something that people will want whether they need that or not. And you don't need that. You don't need that. I don't need that. We don't need that.
Andrew Notably, though, if you don't want to drop a bucket of money on a on one. Divex has a $130 500 meter diver with a helium release valve. Right.
Everett And, and this is the same watch, I think, as my, my Divex, but it's got a higher, higher depth rating and HRV.
Andrew And weighs about a pound more. This is the Offshore that has the HRV.
Everett So I've got the Offshore without the HRV and with the 200 meter HRV, or the 200 meter Offshore with no HRV, but there's also a three, the one you're looking at. Yes, the Offshore 500. 500, that's right. So it's a little bigger, not much. And I think my Offshore is 11 millimeters.
Andrew It's not as big as I expected it to be.
Everett Yeah, it's a big shrouded tuna case, 11 millimeters. Way better than I expected it to be. If you don't know about the Divex Offshore, just Google it. Also the Divex Professional. These are white label watches, probably made by Seiko.
Andrew I may link to it. It depends on if I remember in the morning.
Everett A couple more details about the helium release valve. So saturation diving is also known as mixed to gas diving for obvious reasons. The ISO standard for saturation or mixed gas diving watches is 6425. And the standard requires that every single watch be tested. There's a battery of tests, but basically requires that it can do the things that they need to do. I didn't look up the testing procedures for 6425, but there is an ISO standard.
Andrew Because you have to buy individual ISO standards.
Unknown Yeah.
Andrew It's absurd. It's a very strange ecosystem. Now the question is, you don't have to meet the ISO standard to have an HRV in your watch. What is the higher threshold behind diver? What watches does this ISO requirement apply to? It applies to... Like north of 500s?
Everett I think they have to be 300 meters. I think they have to be 300 meters and they have to have some sort of mixed gas capabilities for up to 30 days. That's what the standard is designed to provide.
Andrew Okay, so it's a step beyond like a diver's watch. Yes. If you want this ISO certification, you have to also demonstrate these capacities.
Everett And each watch has to be, each individual piece that winds up in somebody's hands has to be tested. Which is reasonable, that's yeah, yeah, that's reasonable. So if you have an ISO 6425 watch, you're A, you've paid for it, and B, you know that somebody actually tested that watch. Touch it, put it in a lab. One more detail about this whole thing that I thought was incredibly interesting that I never considered, and that actually kind of tickles me, is that In a saturation diving environment, as we said, you're breathing almost entirely helium and a tiny bit of oxygen. And everybody in the world who's ever sucked on a balloon knows if you inhale a little bit of helium, you talk like Mickey Mouse. Saturation divers, typically a team of guys and gals, I assume. Just a few of them. Do SAT runs of 30 days. That's the standard SAT run. And they talk like Mickey Mouse the entire time.
Andrew I could not get over it. I would I just never be able. To overcome looking at this like this enormous dude. Unshowered unkempt who's who's an underwater contractor. Just hard underwater construction.
Everett the most elite diver in the world, basically Navy SEALs of divers. Talking like Mickey Mouse.
Andrew Yeah. Like, nah. You can accept me talking like that. I would have a lot of trouble accepting The Rock talking like that.
Unknown Yeah.
Everett Yeah. And that's, that's kind of, yeah, I mean, they're maybe not bodybuilders, but yeah, these are, like you said, hard dudes. So that's all I've got. Andrew, anything else you want to say about saturation dive or helium release valve?
Andrew I think that's it. It's always something I've kind of wanted to address because it's something so benign.
Everett And misunderstood, right? Just naturally misunderstood. Even if you know it's misunderstood, you still maybe don't understand it.
Andrew Misunderstood, mischaracterized, brings no value to the watch, but it's certainly cool. Put your hand in a balloon and nothing will change.
Everett Unless you have your hand in that balloon for five days under a very high pressure. Yeah. Other things. Oh. What you got?
Andrew I got another thing. So I got a new video game a few weeks ago for like 12 bucks.
Everett Was it Subnautica 2?
Andrew No.
Everett I know you're serious, but I'm having trouble believing you.
Andrew UFC, the ultimate fighting championship. Four. And I got it because I've always enjoyed playing like boxing games and other sporting games. And I was like, just scrolling the store and I saw that I was like, Oh, it's like almost free. How bad can it be?
Everett How bad is it?
Andrew It's amazing. It's one of the most complicated video games I've ever played. And it's not complicated because the gameplay is very easy. It's knockout, submit or survive an onslaught from our opponent. It's complicated because for anyone who's ever played like a combat sports game on a video game platform, there's a lot of things you can do with your body. And for a video game to be able to capture that with like, I don't know, 12 buttons and then an unlimited combination of ergonomically reasonable button presses is really impressive. And the every stage of this combat sport game is great. The boxing interaction is really, really well done. The, uh, The gameplay's smooth. Everything is very intuitive. I was playing it with my six-year-old, who's not good at it because he's six, but he understood immediately the mechanics of the game. He's like, okay, these buttons make me punch you, these buttons make me kick you, this button makes me punch you here, here, here, like these combinations of buttons.
Everett So it's basically exactly like WWF WrestleMania from 1989. But the graphics are better.
Andrew The clinch mechanics are great. The grappling mechanics are great. I'm shocked at how intuitive it is. But then as you dive into it, like once you start to progress from like easy and normal to hard to legendary, there are virtually unlimited button combinations that are much less intuitive that you have to learn the mechanics of.
Everett So it's a fighting game. I'm giving you a little bit of shit. I'm sorry.
Andrew You are. You are. It's like, it's like when you graduate from, from playing, you know, Madden on easy to all Madden.
Everett Or when you learn a Falcon punch for the first time, you're like, you time it right.
Andrew Yeah. You, when you get those mechanics down and you like, you just know how to do it. I have been playing the shit out of this game. It's, Terrific. And the outside of gameplay is well done. There's like you build your career and you have your training camps and you kind of try to build your status as a fighter. I've been really, really taken into it.
Everett So do you get to like design your character? Yeah, you can design your character. Did you design a character to look like you?
Andrew No. He has hair and a beard. Lots of hair and lots of beard. And he's ripped. None of those things represent anything about me. He's also tall because he's got a better reach. Yeah. We weigh about the same.
Everett I think, I think I'm going to start when I do these, when I do these things, I'm going to start designing these characters to look exactly like me. So not super tall, not attractive, built like a Pixar mom.
Andrew I did create one to look like you and I routinely beat the shit out of it. Cool. Mark built his and he is like a six foot nine, 200 pound dude with a rainbow mohawk and a Viking beard that goes to his knees.
Everett Just for context, I believe Mark is the smallest kid in his class, correct? I'd be shocked if he wasn't.
Andrew Yeah.
Unknown Yeah, he's tiny.
Everett He's tiny. And he's younger than most of the kids too.
Andrew Yeah, a little bit. But he goes to his jujitsu class and he's there with like some ass. He's there with kids from four to seven. He's still among the smaller, but he is absolutely the most aggressive. The coach is always like to do to do to do. No, no, no, no, no. We're to one right now. When we go to three, you can do that. But cool it. He's like throwing the shit out of these kids have been doing jujitsu for three years. He's like, fuck. Like, be cool, man. Shit. So anyway, UFC for if you got 12 bucks and a bunch of hours. Do it. That's good.
Everett I'm going to have to see if it's a if it's available on switch.
Andrew If not, you have the code to my garage.
Everett Yes, I do. I'm going to take this a little bit different direction, not to suggest that UFC for video games, $12 video games are lowbrow.
Andrew I mean, you beat the shit out of other humans, it's a little lowbrow just inherently and not to say that podcasts even
Everett Like public broadcasting podcasts are highbrow, but, uh, maybe a little bit different, a change of pace here. So if you spend any time listening to podcasts, you may have heard of a little podcast called 40 and 20, but you also may have heard of a podcast called cereal, which I think is probably the most sort of, uh, viral podcasts that ever existed, especially because it came before COVID.
Andrew Yeah. Imagine if that thing had dropped during COVID. Yeah, it would have been nuts. No one would have known about it.
Everett So Serial came out a handful of years ago, hosted by the really incredibly talented Sarah Koenig. It's fantastic. It tells the story of this guy, Adnan Syed, who was accused something falsely and then convicted of murdering his girlfriend, Hayden Lee, blah, blah, blah. If you haven't listened to Serial Season 1, I highly recommend it. He did it. He's certainly still in prison for life based on that. But it was a phenomenon. And Serial has maybe been in the conversation since then. They did their Season 2, which was Bo Bergdahl, which I think was less captivating for any number of reasons. They've released a new podcast, not under the serial title. And it's called, it's a single season sort of limited series called the Trojan Horse Affair. And this is, it's very much in the style of, of serial. It's a serial production and it is very much in that same style. There are a couple of hosts. One of the hosts is Brian Reed, who is a very experienced investigative journalist, and the other is a journalism student, or at least at the time, called Hamza Syed. And these guys are investigating. I almost don't want to say what it's about, because learning what the topic is about is going to make you not listen to it. They're investigating something. They're investigating something. I will tell you what it's about, but please, for the love of God, Trust me when I say any thoughts that you might have about how interesting this might be based on the subject matter are completely wrong.
Andrew And I'm going to interrupt you for a very important reminder of that. You're listening to a podcast about watches.
Everett You're listening to minute 55 of a podcast about watches episode 173, 74. So the The skinny here is that in the last decade, I'm not sure exactly when, there was a plot, this controversy in these English public schools, particularly in a town called Birmingham. I think I'm saying that right, or maybe Burma. Birmingham. Birmingham. And it involved a fairly well organized and potentially successful, or at least partially successful, plot from this specific group of Sunni Muslims who had sort of infiltrated public school administration to kind of take these schools over. And this thing did get international press. There's this famous letter from the time called the Trojan Horse Letter, which is ostensibly written by someone involved in this plot that kind of lays out what the details of the plot are, including getting people in leadership positions and getting rid of the people you don't like and putting people in you do like in order to kind of... Sounds like normal school board shit. Well, okay. So, so the plot is basically to make schools more Muslim and, and more sort of stoically Muslim, traditionally Muslim, um, And this thing gets national coverage, international coverage, excuse me. And in generally it's accepted and reported that this is a real thing. This actually happened. People lost their jobs and, um, we're banned from teaching and, and that's it. Well, these guys start there. Um, but also with a set of skepticisms and the way they tell this story is absolutely riveting. So they talk about driveway moments where you get to where you're going and you can't get out of the car because you're listening. I've been listening to this now for about two weeks and every single time I get to where I'm going, I have a driveway moment where I don't want to turn it off. It's riveting. The story is really well told. There's some very interesting meta moments. The chemistry between the hosts is really good. It is fantastic. I am now right about at the end of Episode 7 and starting Episode 8, so I still don't know. How long are these episodes? About an hour, I'd say. Okay. Yeah, which means it takes me a long time because I only drive for 12 minutes. That's right. So I'm listening to about an episode every couple of days at this point.
Andrew That was the best part about super commuting, man. Yeah. 250 miles a day. I ripped up podcasts. I don't do that anymore.
Everett Yeah. So I highly recommend Trojan Horse Affair. I think you can listen to it just about anywhere, right? It's one of these super podcasts.
Andrew It's American life. I mean, you can listen to it right from the website. Exactly. Exactly.
Everett So, uh, it's just fantastic. Shout out to one of our, one of our good friends, uh, Joe Frost, AKA Captain Insano. Captain Insano. who clued me in on it. It's just really, really good. I love it. Highly recommend it.
Andrew I'll take a listen-see. Do it. Play a look-see.
Everett Do it. Andrew, Andrew, is there anything else that you'd like to say about watches or UFC video games or perhaps even Trojan horses before we go?
Andrew Ball's helium release valve on their ball skin diver, they integrated the helium release valve into the crown stem So there's no weird little nipple and no extra crown.
Everett I actually have a helium release valve integrated into my body. Yeah.
Andrew But the ball skin diver, they've got some, they've got a cool technology in it.
Everett Uh, Hey, thanks you guys for joining us for this episode of 40 in 20 the watch clicker podcast. We're really glad you're here. Uh, you can check this out. on Instagram at 40 and 20 at watch clicker. Also, please check us out the website, watch clicker.com. That's where we post weekly reviews, articles, and of course, every single episode of this podcast. We want to thank Notice Watches, I think for the last time, for supporting this episode of the podcast.
Andrew This is, uh, yeah, this is your last opportunity to hear your warning.
Everett If you go to the Notice website right now, you can get 10% off any watch by using the code CLICKER at checkout. So check out noticewatches.com. And thanks Notice again for supporting what eight or nine episodes of the podcast. If you want to support us, you can do that at patreon.com slash 40 and 20. That's how we get all the hosting software, uh, hardware for the website and the podcast. We really, really, really appreciate everybody who's decided to support us. And if you don't, we'd love it if you did. And don't forget to tune back in next Thursday for another hour of watches, food, drinks, life, and other things we like.
Unknown Bye bye.