TIMEPIECES
OCTOBER 19, 2021
The Tale Of Rolex : The King Of Wristwatch
The tale of Rolex : the king of wristwatch, a masterpiece of art and technology in their products delivering precise time forever.
Rolex SA is a Swiss watch designer & manufacturer based in Geneva, Switzerland. It was founded in 1905 by Hans Wilsdorf and Alfred Davis in London, England. At first the company used the word “Rolex” as the brand name of their watches in 1908 and the name became Rolex Watch Co, Ltd in 1915.
The naming comes from the French phrase horlogerie exquise, meaning “hoROLogical EXcellence”. But it seems that Wilsdorf only wanted a name that would be easily pronounced internationally. And he wanted a name that looked good on the watches, symmetrical in capital letters.
After World War I Rolex moved their base to Geneva and in 1920 Hans Wilsdorf registered Montres Rolex SA in Geneva as the new company name, which later became Rolex SA – montre means a watch in English.
Along with their subsidiary Montres Tudor SA, Rolex sold their wristwatches under the Rolex and Tudor brands. They design, make and distribute watches under the brands.
In 1926 a third-party casemaker produced a waterproof and dustproof case for Rolex and named it “Oyster”. With this new case, the infiltration of dust and moisture under the dial and crown which damaged the movement, could now be avoided.
Then in 1931 Rolex patented a self-winding mechanism called a Perpetual motor and the Rolex Oyster watch became known as the Oyster Perpetual.
Hans Wilsdorf established the Hans Wilsdorf Foundation in 1944 after the death of his wife. He left all of his Rolex shares and decided that some of the company’s income would go to charity. Wilsdorf died in 1960 and the trust has owned and run Rolex SA since then.
Generally, Rolex has three watch lines : Oyster Perpetual, Professional and Cellini. Each Rolex comes with own unique serial number to identify production period of the watch. The serial number system was first introduced in 1926 and was issued sequentially until 1954 when Rolex restarted from #999.999 to #0. Then in 1987 and 2010 there were changing in serial numbers.
Rolex watches are so expensive due to the craftmanship and design are said to be very high. And besides that the materials to construct the watch are not cheap either. There is gold, silver, diamond, high precision machine, strictly clockwork mechanism and numerous hours that takes to build a watch.
On October 26, 2017, a Rolex Daytona wristwatch manufactured in 1968 was sold by Phillips in its New York auctions for US$ 17.75 million. In 2018 it is the most expensive wristwatch and the second most expensive watch ever sold at auction.
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