It all began when a jet-set member from an entrepreneurial family, Charles von Bren, started assembling his own watches in 1946. In the fifties, scuba diving quickly became popular, both as a leisure activity as well as professionally. Charles got into the hobby, diving close to his home in lake Neuchatel. In 1959 he decided to focus on creating dive watch cases under a new name: Squale, Italian for shark.