WT_2004_05: ROLEX: THE STATUS SYMBOL

ROLEX
THE STATUS
All of Rolex’s virtues culminate
in the Datejust: a chronometercertified
wristwatch, a water-resistant
case, automatic winding –
and, of course, a date display.
The accompanying photo depicts
the newest model. Introduced
in 2004, Reference 116 138 with
a yellow gold case and leather
strap sells for $12,800.
52 WatchTime October 2004
The new yellow gold version
of the Datejust tells
the story behind the house
of Rolex. WatchTime
retraces the company’s
history from its founding in
1908 to the launch of the
Datejust in 1945.
BY GISBERT
L. BRUNNER

SYMBOL
The history of Rolex, like that of so
many important global brands, began
with an impressive entrepreneurial
personality. Hans Wilsdorf left his native Germany
at age 19 and went to Switzerland,
where he got his first taste of the watch business.
He moved on to London a few years later,
where he found a business partner and
started his own business. The company of
Wilsdorf & Davis Ltd. conducted business at
83 Hatton Gardens, where Wilsdorf laid the
foundation for what would ultimately become
a global watch empire.
Wilsdorf was a skilful businessman with
ambition and foresight. Soon after the turn of
the 20th century, when most men wore pocket-watches
and many people ridiculed the first
timepieces for the wrist, he sensed that the future
would in fact belong to the wristwatch.
His business idea was a good one, but a critical
ingredient was lacking. Wilsdorf hadn’t yet
found a precise movement that could be encased
inside a fashionable and adequately water-resistant
case.
This was the situation facing him when he
moved his business to 44 Holborn Viaduct.
The market square in Kulmbach, Germany. Wilsdorf’s
grandfather’s shop can be seen in the center of the photo.
Wilsdorf’s contacts with the Swiss watchmaking
industry stood him in good stead now. He
traveled to Biel and visited Aegler SA, a watch
business that had developed an 11-ligne movement
with a lever escapement and had already
successfully encased that caliber inside its own
wristwatches. Wilsdorf offered to distribute Aegler’s
wristwatches in Great Britain, and the
Swiss firm was amenable to the idea. By the end
of his visit, the partners agreed on a first deal
worth several hundred thousand Swiss francs.
This was a daring step for Wilsdorf because the
value of the deal was five times larger than the
total operating capital of Wilsdorf & Davis Ltd.
Fortunately, the reward for his courage was
soon forthcoming. In 1913, Wilsdorf & Davis
was granted exclusive rights to distribute Aegler
wristwatches in Great Britain and throughout
the British Empire.
This trailblazing success didn’t materialize
out of thin air. To simplify business dealings be-
tween London and Switzerland, Wilsdorf had
established an office in La Chaux-de-Fonds in
1907. In 1912, when the collaboration with
Aegler was already proceeding smoothly, Wilsdorf
moved the office to Biel, where a managing
agent ran things.
Wilsdorf was too ambitious to accept the
fact that the big English specialty shops like
The Goldsmiths Company or Asprey insisted
that their own name appear on the dials (and
HANS WILSDORF WAS TOO AMBITIOUS TO LANGUISH
IN ANONYMITY. HE WANTED TO MAKE A
WATCH WITH HIS OWN BRAND NAME ON THE DIAL.
sometimes even on the movements), forcing
suppliers to languish in anonymity. With characteristic
tenacity, he set out to put an end to
this glory-hogging tradition. To accomplish his
goal, however, he needed a brand name of his
own and highly recognizable products.
The beginning came in 1908 with the coining
of the word “Rolex.” According to an unconfirmed
legend, the neologism was born as
an abbreviation of the French phrase “horlogerie
exquise,” which means “exquisite ho-
A view of Geneva and Quai Wilson, where
Hans Wilsdorf lived during the 1950s.
October 2004 WatchTime 53

ROLEX
rology.” Wilsdorf opted for the word “Rolex”
because it could readily be pronounced in
many different languages. Also, the two short,
simple syllables required so little space on a
watch’s dial that there was still plenty of room
left to eternalize a jeweler’s name along with
it. Wilsdorf’s next strategy was to make the Rolex
name synonymous with quality and exclusivity.
He asked his customers for permission to
print “Rolex” on only a few of the watches
that he supplied. After these pioneers had sold
well, he gradually began increasing the number
of “Rolex” watches in each package of six
timepieces. Starting in 1925, he launched a series
of uncommonly creative advertising campaigns
in England. A further contribution to
this successful strategy was made by the British
Commonwealth and its world-traveling citizens,
whose precise Rolex watches attracted
admiring attention wherever they went. Nev-
Rolex’s founder: Hans Wilsdorf
The man who would go down in history as the
founder of the world’s best-known brand of luxury
watches was born in Kulmbach, Germany on
March 22, 1881. Anna and Ferdinand Wilsdorf
named their second child Hans Wilhelm. The talented
boy enjoyed a sheltered childhood for the
first twelve years of his life. But then his parents
died unexpectedly, leaving uncles on his mother’s
side of the family to care for the three orphaned
Wilsdorf children. Hans was sent to a boarding
school in Coburg, from which he graduated at the
unusually young age of 17. He then went to business
school in Bayreuth before turning his back on
Germany at the turn of the 20th century. Wilsdorf’s
late mother was a descendant of the wellknown
Maisel brewing dynasty, so she had hoped
her son would join the family business, but Hans
had other plans. After a brief training with a pearl
dealer in Geneva, he found a job that suited him at
Cuna Korten in La Chaux-de-Fonds in 1900. This
firm, which had its headquarters on posh Boulevard
Léopold Robert, exported watches of all varieties.
For a monthly salary of 80 francs, the multilingual
newcomer took care of English correspondence
and general office tasks. Among his daily
chores was winding and monitoring the rates of
several hundred watches. Korten, which generated
an annual turnover in excess of one million
francs, sparked Wilsdorf’s lifelong fascination with
ticking timepieces. Korten purchased the greater
portion of its merchandise from producers in Germany,
France, and Switzerland. The ambitious
young office assistant soon knew that his true calling
was to go into business on his own. Wilsdorf
54 WatchTime October 2004
ertheless, 19 years would pass before Wilsdorf
was able to deliver nothing but watches bearing
his own insignia on their dials, movements,
and cases. The final breakthrough came with
the launch of the world’s first truly water-resistant
wristwatch. Whether they liked it or not,
dealers who wanted to sell this futuristic product
now had no other choice but to accept the
presence of the name “Rolex.” Wilsdorf had
not only developed a genuinely practical wristwatch
for daily use; he had also given the
product a distinctive brand identity.
More or less simultaneously with the start
of the First World War, Wilsdorf and his partner
in Biel agreed to change the name of the company.
The firm that had formerly been known
as “Les Fils de Jean Aelger – Fabrique Rebberg”
was renamed “Rolex Watch Co., Aegler
S.A., Manufacture d’Horlogerie, Usine du Rebberg.”
Approximately 200 employees were
commissioned three excellent
watchmakers to
each craft a golden chronometer-qualitypocketwatch.
Neuchâtel Observatory
duly awarded an
official rate certificate to
each watch. It didn’t
take Wilsdorf long to sell all three pocket-watches
for a tidy profit. Impressed, Wilsdorf’s bosses entrusted
new tasks and greater responsibilities to
their brilliant young employee, but the narrow horizons
of the company were too confining for Wilsdorf.
After a compulsory army stint in Germany, he
again packed his bags and went to London. He arrived
there in 1903 and founded his own business
two years later.
His beginning was hardly auspicious: Thieves had
stolen his inheritance, which totaled 33,000 German
gold marks, during a ship voyage, so he was
obliged to borrow starting capital from his siblings
and from a much older business partner named Alfred
James Davis. Wilsdorf soon settled in and acquired
British citizenship, a decision spurred on by a
legal battle with the city of Geneva about the confiscation
of a plot of land on the shore of Lac Léman.
After the death of his first wife, May Florence,
Wilsdorf married a native of Appenzell in 1950.
During the winter months, the couple resided in
their large, comfortable home at no. 39, Quai Wilson.
The best ideas typically occurred to Wilsdorf
during his morning ablutions, so the extremely well
endowed gourmand and wine connoisseur usually
spent up to two hours in the bath each morning.
The cover of a brochure
from the World War One era.
occupied with the manufacture of Rolex
watches. The enterprise conducted its business
on the other side of the English Channel
under the name “Wilsdorf & Davis, Rolex
Watch Company.” This name was changed to
This was where he conceived the famous magnifying
(Cyclops) lens above the Oyster’s date display,
which was originally intended to help his
nearsighted wife read the date on her wristwatch.
After breakfast, his trusty chauffeur Rüttimann
would drive him to work in his Mercedes. Rolex’s
boss had first put his trust in the German car
brand around 1935. Rolls Royce repeatedly tried
to convince Wilsdorf of the merits of their noble
British brand, but had no luck in changing his
mind.
Wilsdorf’s employees appreciated the human
side of their boss. At Christmas and before the
beginning of the watchmakers’ annual vacation
season, it was his habit to stroll through each department
and shake each employee’s hand and
personally thank them for their hard work. On
Saturday mornings, Wilsdorf would occasionally
invite a few friends to share a glass of port with
him and listen to anecdotes about his far-flung
journeys. In his later years, the firm’s founder was
burdened by a limp but otherwise healthy. At his
75th birthday celebration in 1956, one of the
highlights of the evening was the presentation to
Wilsdorf of a genuine world premiere: the Stick-
O-Matic, a walking stick with a built-in self-winding
watch.
Twenty-one years after his death, Wilsdorf’s
adopted hometown of Geneva honored him by
naming a street after him. His native town of
Kulmbach, Germany keeps his memory alive at
Hans Wilsdorf Vocational School. His name, however,
cannot rival that of “Rolex”, the brand that
he invented and piloted to global renown.

Some early Rolex models. The one at the far left dates from 1915.
“The Rolex Watch Company Ltd.” in November
1915. More than 60 employees took care
of worldwide sales here. They keenly felt the
consequences of the war in 1919, when more
or less overnight, the British government decided
to impose a 33.3% duty fee on imports.
Wilsdorf wasn’t very happy with Davis, so he
bought out his partner’s share in the business.
Wilsdorf and his wife moved to Geneva, and
from this epicenter of luxury watchmaking,
Wilsdorf planned to deliver his watches to a
rapidly growing global market. The name
“Montres Rolex S.A.” was registered on January
17, 1920. The company’s sole proprietor
and director explained the reasons for his decision
to settle in the Rhône metropolis: “We settled
in Geneva because we want to let our factory
in Biel devote itself exclusively to the manufacture
of watch movements, while we in
Geneva concentrate on creating case models
that suit the cultivated tastes of cosmopolitan
Geneva. Components for Rolex movements
will be made in Biel, but the calibers themselves
will be assembled in Geneva, where they’ll be
56 WatchTime October 2004
The first chronometer
tested in Kew
subjected to the most meticulous testing.” Rolex’s
familiar crown-shaped trademark was first
officially registered in 1925. The five points on
the crown represent the letters in the brand’s
name and simultaneously symbolize the five
fingers on a human hand.
Business flourished steadily until September
21, 1931, when the British pound was drastically
devalued in the wake of the worldwide
economic crisis. This devaluation had a dire effect
on Rolex. Prices charged to customers
throughout the Empire, which was still the
company’s most important market, had to be
adjusted upwards. Exports declined by more
than 60%. If Rolex were to survive, the brand
would have to acquire clientele not living under
the Union Jack. Wilsdorf established subsidiaries
in Paris, Buenos Aires, and Milan. He
also commenced business activities in the Far
East. The expansion paid off, as production of
Oyster models gradually increased from 2,500
to roughly 30,000 watches per year.
Fate dealt Wilsdorf a harsh blow in 1944,
just one year prior to the planned anniversary
celebration, when his wife May Florence died
unexpectedly. The couple had always spent
the winters at Hotel des Bergues in Geneva,
where they resided in a suite of rooms that was
furnished with their own furniture and their
own piano. In accord with his wife’s will, the
childless Wilsdorf transferred his shares of
Montres Rolex SA to the Hans Wilsdorf Foundation,
thus ensuring that his business would
outlive him. Establishing the foundation also
entailed the hiring of two additional directors.
This finally gave Wilsdorf free time for extended
journeys to meet with customers in Africa,
South America, and the U.S.A.
The gigantic Rolex Festival, which lasted for
several days in 1951, celebrated the 70th
birthday of the beloved patron. It also commemorated
his 50 years in the service of time
measurement, the 25th anniversary of the
Oyster case, and the 20th anniversary of the
ROLEX’S BIG BREAKTHROUGH CAME WITH
THE LAUNCH OF THE WORLD’S FIRST WATER-RESISTANT
WRISTWATCH IN 1926.
“Perpetual” rotor winding system. At this
time, Rolex already had subsidiaries in Bombay,
Brussels, Buenos Aires, Dublin, Havana, Johannesburg,
London, Milan, Mexico City, New
York, Paris, Sao Paulo and Toronto. Rolex provided
workspace for some 400 employees in
Geneva. Payrolls from the early 1960s list
roughly 250 people on the staff in Biel.
Wilsdorf didn’t live long enough to witness
his firm’s unavoidable move into a new building
on Rue François-Dussaud. This building,
which is surrounded by a manmade watercourse,
opened in 1965, roughly five years after
Hans Wilsdorf passed away on July 6, 1960
in Escale Fleurie, his summer home on the
southern shore of Lake Geneva.
Wilsdorf insisted that all Rolex movements
be good enough to earn official rate certificates.
No fewer than 48,347 of the 54,799
certificates issued prior to 1944 were awarded
to Rolex chronometers. The firm was awarded
its 50,000th rate certificate in 1945, the same

ROLEX
year that Rolex celebrated its 40th anniversary.
In a letter dated June 4, 1962, the watch-testing
facilities confirmed that Rolex had already
passed the magic number of 500,000 certificates.
This was reason enough to now award
the Red Seal, which had previously been given
to all Rolex chronometers, only to specimens
that had performed with “especially good results”
in the official tests. As the years went by,
the numbers continued to grow. Rolex cele-
Rolex as a Foundation
Wilsdorf transferred his shares of Montres Rolex
SA to the Hans Wilsdorf Foundation in 1945.
The foundation remains the owner of Rolex
Geneva today. Wilsdorf even specified precise instructions
for the distribution of dividends. A major
portion of the money was to be donated to
charity, a purpose that was fully in accord with the
wishes of his deceased wife, who had frequently
accompanied her husband to the office. Institutions
in Geneva which benefit from Wilsdorf’s
generosity include the school of watchmaking,
the academy of fine arts, and the faculty for busi-
58 WatchTime October 2004
Rolex is the
greatest pioneer in
the testing of
wristwatches for
chronometer certification.
The illustration
shows rate
certificates from
1933 and 1965.
brated its millionth chronometer in 1968, its
two-millionth in 1973, and its ten-millionth officially
certified chronometer in 1990. Rolex
manufactured 814,720 of the 1,271,934
movements tested by the C.O.S.C. in 2002.
Although Rolex doesn’t release the exact statistics,
it seems likely that the number of officially
tested wristwatch chronometers with
mechanical movements is slowly but surely
nearing the 20-million mark – a unique record
ness and social sciences at the university. The
Swiss watch-research laboratory in Neuchâtel
also receives Wilsdorf’s largesse. Donations from
his foundation helped build a language library for
the blind, a laboratory at the new school of
watchmaking and an exhibition pavilion in
Lucerne for the animal-protection league. The
foundation also made available numerous radios
and film projectors for charitable purposes. Finally,
talented graduates from vocational schools in
Geneva are eligible for awards and prizes from
the foundation.
that no other manufacture can even come
close to challenging. The many records that
Rolex has set in such tests prove what horological
meticulousness can accomplish when applied
to comparatively small wristwatch calibers.
Nothing can take the place of wellthought-out
construction, precise production,
high-quality materials, and painstaking final
quality-control checks.
These wristwatches had to earn their enviably
good reputation, not only for the accuracy
of their rates, but also for their resistance to
water. The edges of the crystal and the back of
the case are critical locations, especially on a
model with an angular case. The crown and its
stem are also weak links in the water-resistance
chain. Rolex was well aware of these
facts. In the mid 1920s, at a time when wristwatches
commanded only a 35% share of the
market for portable timepieces, the young
business set its sights on finding a once-andfor-all
solution to the problem of leaky cases.
Wilsdorf had first turned his attention to
this crucial theme years before. An early step

ROLEX
PR for the first water-resistant wristwatch:
swimmer Mercedes Gleitz…
in the right direction had been the use of
screw-in cases made by Dennison Watch
Case. These cases are readily identifiable by
the fluting on the rims of their crystals and
backs. This channeling makes both components
easy to grasp so that they can be
screwed to the middle part of the case. This
60 WatchTime October 2004
…swam across the English Channel with an
Oyster on her wrist.
visible attribute continues to distinguish the
backs of Rolex watches today.
Wilsdorf relied on a purely mechanical construction
without problematic materials. His formula
for success can be summarized as follows:
1. a hermetically sealed case, each part of
which is screwed water-resistant;
An early advertisement
for the Rolex Oyster.
The first
Rolex Oyster
from 1926.
2. a new and perfectly form-fitting crystal
made of synthetic material; and
3. a crown that lastingly protects the movement
against moisture penetration, even if the
crown is operated daily.
Wilsdorf purchased the rights to use an
idea that had originally occurred to Georges
Peret and Paul Perregaux. In October 1925,
these two men became the first watchmakers
to screw a crown onto a watch’s case. Rolex
applied for a patent on a threaded case on
September 21, 1926. Another application followed
on October 18, this time for patent protection
on a crown that was screwed to the
middle part of the case. Corresponding
patents were soon granted in Switzerland and
Great Britain. There wasn’t much need for research
because Rolex’s revolutionary inventions
were entirely unprecedented. All that
was missing was a catchy name to aptly express
the characteristic attribute of the new
case. After considering several possibilities, the
name was chosen: “Oyster.”
The first official appearance by the Oyster
came soon thereafter. Mercedes Gleitze, a
young stenographer from London, swam
across the English Channel in the record-breaking
time of just 15 hours and 15 minutes on October
7, 1927. Afterwards, she showed her
perfectly functioning Rolex to a crowd of astonished
reporters. To publicize this sensational
achievement, Wilsdorf ran a full-page ad on
the front page of the Daily Mail. Although the
ad cost Rolex a king’s ransom, more than 2 million
readers saw the ad when the newspaper
was published on November 24, 1927.
Wilsdorf supplied his dealers with small,
patented aquariums to display in their shop
An Oyster model
from 1928.

ROLEX
Healthy evolution: the first Datejust from 1945 (Ref. 4467, far left) combined all the Rolex virtues.
Models from the 1970s are shown in the center and at the right.
windows. Inside each aquarium, a ticking Oyster
continued to show the correct time while a
goldfish swam placidly all around it. Advertising
campaigns featuring popular actresses and
the Oyster’s participation in attention-getting
pioneering airplane flights (where the watches
successfully withstood severe temperature
variations, extreme vibrations, and plenty of
dust) further contributed to Rolex’s ever-growing
renown.
Despite patent protection, Rolex was soon
obliged to defend itself against imitators. Legal
proceedings were initiated in 1934 against the
Schmitz Brothers case factory in Grenchen,
Advertisement for the first Datejust.
62 WatchTime October 2004
Germany. After two-and-a-half -years of litigation,
judges at a Swiss court unanimously
agreed on July 8, 1937 that Schmitz Brothers
owed compensatory damages to Rolex. The
verdict made it clear that although Wilsdorf
had not invented the concept of the water-resistant
wristwatch, he was the first person to
translate the idea into practical reality via industrial
manufacturing methods. In this context, it
became known that Rolex had invested 1.2 million
Swiss francs in the launch and distribution
of the Oyster case, thus formatively contributing
to the growth of people’s confidence in water-resistant
wristwatches and opening new
markets for the entire watch industry. Roughly
200,000 Swiss-made water-resistant wristwatches
were sold in 1935-1936 alone.
In 1926, Wilsdorf’s foresight had helped
him identify another problem that beset wristwatches,
one that still hadn’t been solved in
the early 1930s. Of course, it was easy to hermetically
reseal a crown once it had been
pushed back in after winding the mainspring,
but one instant of forgetfulness could render
useless all of the hard work and ingenuity that
Rolex had incorporated into a water-resistant
wristwatch. What Rolex needed was a selfwinding
movement that would eliminate the
need for manual daily winding.
Wilsdorf and his technical staff in Biel had
defined the basic idea for a “Perpetual” in
1930: “The invention of an automatic winding
mechanism that moves back and forth silently,
smoothly, and without a buffer.” This idea, of
course, hadn’t materialized out of thin air.
Wilsdorf described its background in his autobiography:
“The logical consequence of the
Rolex Oyster was the creation of an automatic
watch whose movement would repeatedly
wind itself on its own, thus ensuring that the
timepiece would continue to run uninterruptedly.”
The Rolex team based their research on
the work of Abraham Louis Perrelet, Sr. (1729-
1826), a self-taught watchmaker
who had successfully experimented
with a rotor in
1770.
The new Rolex Perpetual
ticked satisfactorily in every respect in 1931.
The advantages of the Perpetual didn’t
lie solely in its rotating weight; the
modular construction with a sepa-
The Perpetual selfwinding
model.
Scarcely changed on the outside:
a Datejust from 1988.

Rolex’s headquarters on Rue François-Dussaud in Geneva.
rate group of components for the automatic
winding mechanism can also be regarded as a
trailblazing innovation. Modular architecture
meant that it wasn’t necessary to disassemble
the entire movement whenever the winding
system required servicing. To guard against
over-winding, a safety mechanism consisting
of a slip-spring prevented the system from
over-tightening and ultimately snapping the
steel mainspring.
Wilsdorf still had to market the new watch,
and encountered many jewelers and watch
merchants who still remembered their bad experiences
with the Harwood; the first serially
manufactured self-winding wristwatch. Fortunately
for Wilsdorf, his was a much better
2004: The Latest Models
The new Datejust models
for 2004 include (left)
Ref. 116 238 in yellow
gold ($17,250). Bigger
hands distinguish the
newcomers. The rehaut
has also been updated:
it’s now engraved with
the brand’s name and (at
the “6”) the individual
case number. The same
details apply for the
Turn-O-Graph (right),
Ref. 116 264 in stainless
steel with rotating white
gold bezel ($5,425).
64 WatchTime October 2004
watch in every respect, and eventually the Perpetual’s
inherent excellence, coupled with
well-targeted advertising campaigns, overcame
any hesitations.
The 15 years of the original patent protection
came to an end in 1948, but Rolex still
held a commanding lead over nearly all its
competitors. After all, for the past decade and
a half, rotor winding and other refinements in
Rolex’s Perpetual had been off limits to them.
Only after 1948 were competitors permitted
to introduce their own systems. Rolex wanted
to debut a date display watch to mark the
firm’s 40th birthday in 1945. The Datejust (caliber
740) was a world’s first, becoming an archetype
that would influence the technology
Four decades of continuity: André J. Heiniger
(1921-2000) led Rolex from 1963 to 1992,
when his son Patrick Heiniger took the reins.
and appearance of generations of subsequent
watches. The watch’s name was carefully selected:
“Date” is self-explanatory, while “Just”
stands for “just in time.” And this means that
the date display advances to show the next
day’s date without delay at midnight. The
watch was the world’s first fully water-resistant
men’s wristwatch with automatic rotor winding,
central seconds, and window-type date
display whose accurate rate was verified by an
official chronometer certificate.
The Datejust featured a central secondshand
and a readily legible date display inside a
window at the “3,” a location chosen for a
very good reason: most people wear a wristwatch
on their left wrist, so the date display at
the “3” is the first indicator that comes into
view when the timepiece peeks out from under
your shirt cuff.
WatchTime would like to thank Wempe
Jewelers for granting us permission to
reprint portions of Gisbert L. Brunner’s upcoming
book on Rolex.