Sherpa is a German watch brand.

Based in Meerbusch near Düsseldorf, Germany, Sherpa Watches GmbH was founded by Martin Klocke with the goal of reviving the “Sherpa” watch series launched in the 1950s by Enicar. The term, familiar from Himalayan extreme mountaineering, stands for reliability, willingness to perform and durability; therefore, the range then and now includes not only models suitable for expeditions, but also diving watches such as the “Ultradive”.

The sophisticated, carefully thought-out concept and high quality standards pursued by the company's founder include both technical refinements such as classic compressor technology (to be distinguished from the technology of the same name used at Jaeger-LeCoultre) and a Tibetan Buddhist component.

The principle of the bayonet compressor used here was rediscovered by Martin Klocke while studying old archives. It concerns both the crown seal and the caseback seal. First, the history of this invention:

• Crown seal:
  The ingenious idea is to do without the screw-down crown, but to use the rising water pressure for sealing. This technology, called Monoflex, was developed in the 1960s by Ervin Piquerez S.A. (EPSA) and updated by Sherpa.
  In this process, higher external pressure leads to higher stress on the seal, while the stress decreases or disappears at lower (or no) pressure. In this way, the seal materials are protected and have a much longer functional reliability and durability.

• Case bottom seal:

  
  Case back of the Sherpa Ultradive with the traditional EPSA diving helmet logo
  © Sherpa

  The caseback design follows the same compression principle: the “compressor” system used to be a snap-on caseback first, which could be compressed to increase waterproofness. The “EPSA-STOP” or “bayonet compressor” system was a further development of this system, in which the case bottom did not snap into place, but was secured by an ingenious bayonet system, which also made it possible to compress the case bottom under water pressure.
  Finally, a further development was the most famous and probably most complicated of these systems, the “super compressor”, in which a screwed case bottom was combined with the compression function, which also made it possible to compress the case bottom.
  In this way, on deeper dives, the rising water pressure automatically pushes even a screw-down caseback – as used on current Sherpa models – deeper into the case, resulting in a fixed

• Sherpa watches