Rolex

By Rodrigo Lopez

A novel about the thrilling voyage of a watch, a gold Rolex GMT Master, silent witness of drama, intrigue, death, adventure, love, tragedy. This incredible journey begins in Cuba, and from there it travels to Africa, South America, Europe, North America, Asia.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Feb 10, 2021
• ISBN: 9781716199547

Book preview

coincidental.

Chapter 1

HAUTE HOROLOGY

At the beginning of the XX century, in 1905, a young twenty-four-year-old German visionary named Hans Wilsdorf, founded in London, a watch importing company, Wilsdorf & Davies, with his brother-in-law, Alfred Davies, and the vision of supplying the British market, with high quality watches at low cost. Mr. Wilsdorf had no idea that what he was starting, will become in a few decades, almost a cult, a family of precious objects that today, are symbols of luxury, success, exclusivity, distinction; a true watchmaking icon.

In those days, most watches available were pocket ones, and with poor precision. An owner would have to adjust his watch almost daily, because the accuracy in registering hours, minutes and specially seconds, wasn’t a priority among the manufacturers. A pocket watch was considered a jewel, they were made in gold, silver, platinum; many times, with elaborate engravings on their cases, elegant designs for the numbers in their dials, with gorgeous fobs made of precious metals, and elegantly attached to the owner’s suit. But inside, those wonderful containers lacked accuracy. Hans from the beginning became obsessed with it, and searched the way to provide what back then, was only available in naval, military or railway chronographs: high precision.

Hans started out as an assembler, business model that lasted a few decades; he used to buy cases, bracelets and dials from companies such as Genex, Gay Freres, Singer or Beyeler, but for the most important part of the watch, the mechanical movements, he searched in Switzerland for a manufacturer, similarly obsessed with precision as he was; he found it in the company Jean Aegler, based in the city of Bienne, Berna canton.

Right from the start, Hans had the idea of an appropriate name for his watches; it shouldn’t be long nor complex, easy to print in a little dial. It shouldn’t be difficult to pronounce either, even for customers that do not speak English or German; his brand name had to be short, easy to remember, easy to pronounce in almost any language. Hans used to say that walking along London’s Cheapside, in a horse-drawn streetcar, a genie whispered to his ear the word ROLEX. It was perfect.

After an obsessive joint effort, Wilsdorf y Aegler received in 1910, and for the first time for a watch mechanism, small enough to fit into a case of adequate size for a wrist watch, a Swiss Certificate of Chronometric Precision, issued by the Official Watch Rating Centre in Bienne. Four years later, the prestigious Kew Observatory in London, issued Rolex a class A precision certificate. Ever since then, Rolex watches are considered more than simple time counting machines; Rolexes are highly accurate chronographs.

Rolex watches quickly gained popularity among soldiers, mostly because counting on an easily portable and precise watch, proved to be of great utility to organize military operations. With the outbreak of WWI, the tendency grew in logarithmic proportions; artillery attacks coordination, speeds, distance and timing in countless air strikes, synchronization of infantry movements, and many other military applications, found an awesome tool with the innovative, precise and practical Rolex watches; most armies gave their officers, a wristwatch as basic equipment, and the troops, seeing their commanding officers checking their watches, also wanted one. Some special especial forces corps were issued special wrist watches with marker hands that glow in the dark. Hans wasn’t the only watchmaker that had the vision of getting into this new watch market, prestigious brands such as Cartier, American Watch Co, H. Williamson, Electa, JW Benson, Rotherham and Sons, Baume & Co, S Smith & Son and even London’s Harrods, offered wrist watches during the first decade of the 1900s.

However, the Great War brought an unexpected consequence for Wilsdorf & Davies; the British government, in an effort to avoid the flight of capitals during the conflict, applied a 33.3% import tax to all luxury items, which included watches. This cost overrun, forced Wilsdorf & Davies to move to Genève in 1919, and there, Wilsdorf and his brother-in-law, established Montres Rolex S.A. in 1920.

But the war, besides motivating the move of the company to Switzerland, had a transformation effect on the habits of watch buyers. Before the war, most males wore pocket watches, usually with lid and fob; wrist watches were preferred by women. However, the war veterans saw the utility and convenience of a good watch on their wrists, so many of them, when returning to civilian life, wanted to keep this tool. Market tendency shifted 180° for the watch industry; by 1930 wrist watches were being sold fifty times more than pocket ones. Post-war was the best times for Rolex and other watchmakers, the market flourished notoriously, which allowed them to prosper.

In 1926 Rolex launched the first water resistant watch in the market; the hermetic "Oyster" case, guaranteed the integrity of the mechanism inside, which made it the first aquatic watch in the world. Next year, Rolex tested its Oyster when professional swimmer Mercedes Gleitze, swam across the English Channel in ten hours, wearing a Rolex Oyster on her wrist; when she arrived in France, her watch was working perfectly.

In 1931 Rolex set again a new milestone in watchmaking innovation, by introducing the first self-winding movement in the industry, the Perpetual mechanism. From that moment, owners wouldn’t have to wind up their watches manually; the movement of the watch on the wrist, during their regular activities, would take care of that.

During this era of development and changes, Rolex watches were not perceived as luxury or ostentation items, but as fine tools for the military, sportsmen, adventurers. Their prices weren’t astronomically high either, of course they were higher than less sophisticated watches, but a regular guy could afford one, without the need of a banker’s salary of belonging to a wealthy family. Rolex watches were designed and manufactured for the men who defied the status-quo, who dared to cross the borders of the adventure, the depths of the oceans, the sky’s heights. They were, and are, outstanding tools for men and women dissatisfied with the ordinary.

In 1954 Rolex introduced the Submariner, a watch capable of one-hundred-meter underwater submersions, with a rotating bezel, so divers could calculate their immersion times, and with an expandable bracelet, so it could be worn with or without gloves.

In 1955, Rolex took their watches to the sky, by launching into the market, the GMT Master, especially designed for airplane pilots, who while flying, cross several time zones. The GMT Master had an additional hour marker hand, so the owner could keep track of the right time, in two different parts of the planet. Many airline companies adopted the GMT Master as the official watch for their pilots, being the first of them, the legendary PanAm, who cooperated with Rolex in this development.

The scientific world wasn’t out of sight for Rolex, in 1956 the introduction of the Milgauss was intended for the scientific community, being the first watch to be resistant to magnetic fields, strong up to a thousand gauss (magnetic flux density unit, that inspired its name). The Millgauss was successfully tested by the CERN (Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire), whose scientists tested it submitting by it to intense magnetic fields, which did not alter its functioning.

In 1960, Rolex developed a much more radical version of the Submariner, the Deepsea Special, and tested it in the extreme depth of 10,916 meters, during the expedition of the legendary bathyscaphe Trieste, that was sent down the Mariana Trench, the deepest depression in the planet. On the outside of the bathyscaphe, a Deepsea was attached during the expedition, and both came back from the depths, in perfect shape. This record was only been surpassed by another Rolex, the Deepsea Challenge in 2012, when it descended to the amazing depth of 12,000 meters during the James Cameron and National Geographic expedition, in the same Mariana Trench.

In 1963, Rolex created a watch specially designed for speed lovers, inspired by car racing at the Daytona Beach speedway, in Florida. The Cosmograph Daytona was a chronograph with independent sub-dials to track hours, minutes and seconds, and was equipped with a tachymetric scaled bezel, to calculate times and speed over fixed distances.

Recent Rolex models for specific activities are the Yacht Master, designed for sail boats crews (2012), and the Sky-Dweller, an alternate version for pilots, which instead of a second hour marker as on the GMT, uses a second hour dial, but both methods have the same purpose; keep track of the right time in two different time zones.

Rolex didn’t forget the luxury market. In parallel to its sports models, Rolex