Rolex

Wilsdorf’s idea was a wristwatch reliable enough to trust, at a time when wristwatches kept poor time. He built his watches around small, precise movements from the Aegler works in Biel, and registered the Rolex name in 1908.^1, 2, 4

Precision was the selling point. In 1910 a Rolex wristwatch received a Swiss certificate of chronometric precision from the official rating centre in Bienne, and in 1914 Kew Observatory in Britain gave one a class A certificate. The young brand built its name on such certificates.¹

Wilsdorf moved the business from London to Switzerland: Wikipedia dates its international headquarters to Bienne in 1915 and the move to Geneva to 1919, and Montres Rolex SA was registered in Geneva in 1920. The Geneva company cased, assembled and sold the watches, while the movements still came from Aegler in Biel, which, according to the Historical Dictionary of Switzerland, became Rolex’s own movement manufacture.^{1, 2, 4, 7}

In 1926 Rolex sealed its case against water and dust and named it the Oyster, which Rolex calls the first waterproof wristwatch. The swimmer Mercedes Gleitze wore one across the English Channel in 1927, and Rolex announced the result on the front page of the Daily Mail. A self-winding mechanism with a rotor, the Perpetual, followed: patented in 1931 by one account, in 1930 by another.^3, 4, 8

In the early 1950s Rolex began making watches meant as working tools, for diving, flying, climbing and scientific expeditions. The Explorer arrived in 1953, the year an expedition carrying Oyster Perpetual watches reached the summit of Everest, and the Submariner the same year, a watch at the centre of the argument over how the diving watch began. In 1960 an experimental Rolex fixed to the outside of the bathyscaphe Trieste went down 10,916 metres into the Mariana Trench and came back in working order.^3, 10

Wilsdorf had no children. After his wife died he set up the Hans Wilsdorf Foundation in 1945 and left it all his shares, so that the company would outlast him and stay independent. The foundation has owned the Rolex group since his death in 1960 and lives on its dividends. Rolex is still headquartered in Geneva and makes most of its components itself.^2, 3, 5

Wilsdorf also created Tudor, a brand for Rolex agents to sell at a lower price. The prototype Panerai built in 1935 for the Italian navy’s divers used a base supplied by Rolex. In 2023 Rolex agreed to buy Bucherer, the Swiss retailer that had sold its watches for nearly a century.^{12, 13, 14, 15}