Archimèdes by MILUS

This is the Archimèdes by Milus, the modern successor to the 1970s Milus Super Compressor of which you can see an example of at the bottom of this post.

During the mid-to-late 50s, the Swiss case manufacturer, Ervin Piquerez S.A. (EPSA) filed patents and began manufacturing their iconic Super Compressor cases.



They manufactured cases for all the top Swiss brands: Blancpain, IWC, JLC, Longines as well as Milus.

It was fairly common practice during the 70s for brands to use catalog components sourced from specialist case manufactures such as EPSA.



As a result many of the vintage Super Compressor watches that have survived the test of time share some components in common.

The modern-day Archimèdes by Milus can directly trace its roots back to those famous compressor divers.



It is a contemporary recreation; a model born from much research particularly with regard to the watch’s proportions.

The development focused on the 41mm brushed casing and the reflection of the mirror-polished bezel.



In addition the Archimèdes has a special granulated black or blue dial with famous “Broad Arrow” hands coated in SuperLuminova –

and a lollipop seconds hand with circular counter-weight while the hour markers comprise of batons, triangular indexes and Arabic numerals.



Like any compressor, it is characterized by dual-crowns and an internal rotational bezel for keeping track of the time spent underwater.

The bidirectional is operated by using the upper crown at 2 o’clock while the 4 o’clock crown takes care of time-setting.



Like the hour markers, the bezel employs batons, Arabic numerals at the cardinal points and a prominent triangular marker at 12H.

On the left lateral side of the case is a diver’s feature not historically found of any compressor cased diver, an automatic Helium Escape Valve.



Unlike the historic Archimèdes of the 1960s which was fitted with Plexiglass, the modern-day Milus Archimèdes features a curved Sapphire crystal.

Power comes from a Swiss ETA 2892 movement which is housed in the watch’s Stainless steel case which is water-resistant up to 30 ATM or 300 meters. MSRP is 1'900CHF.



Thoughts? Classic, iconic and stylish, this is a style of diver’s watch that we simply don’t see enough variety of. It's good to see a new Swiss compressor enter the market.

This is a fine example – I love the hands and the dial finish in particular. The price isn’t too painful either. What do you think?