Tudor Submariner 79090

The 79090 belongs to the last years of Tudor's Submariner, before the company replaced that name with other diving-watch families. Introduced in 1989, it is a 39 mm steel automatic with a date, a rotating timing ring and a raised acrylic crystal. Tudor offered it with a blue dial and matching ring or with both in black. Its factory water-resistance rating was 200 metres.

By then, the Submariner had already changed faces several times. The 79090 does not use Tudor's famous square-ended snowflake hands. Its hour hand has a round, divided luminous section, and the face mixes round markers with triangles at six and nine. The triangle at twelve is larger, giving the dial a clear top even when the markings are all that can be seen.

The date sits beneath a magnifying bubble in the crystal. Acrylic is relatively easy to scratch, but the curved cover is a conspicuous part of this watch's appearance. The following generation replaced it with sapphire; on the 79090, that older material remained above an otherwise fairly modern automatic movement. The ETA 2824-2 inside winds from wrist movement and provides a separately adjustable date.

Tudor's own archive describes a folded-link steel bracelet, reference 9315/0, with a Tudor-signed Fliplock clasp. The links are made from folded metal rather than the solid sections common on new bracelets. Its construction is one reason this watch should not be imagined simply as a current diver with an older dial.