49 Fun Facts About Rolex

In which city was the company that became Rolex founded in 1905?

London is where Hans Wilsdorf, aged 24, and Alfred Davis began by importing Swiss watch movements and casing them for jewellers; the head office did not leave for Geneva until 1919.

Collectors nickname the first Rolex GMT-Master's two-colour bezel after which soft drink?

Pepsi's colours matched the bezel, whose red half marks the daylight hours and blue half the night; a later black-and-red version duly became the 'Coke'.

What does Rolex laser-etch, almost invisibly, into its crystals?

Crown logo: a copy almost too small to see sits in the crystal at six o'clock to trip up counterfeiters; Rolex registered the five-point crown as its trademark in 1925.

In which country was Rolex's founder Hans Wilsdorf born?

Germany: born in Kulmbach, Bavaria, Wilsdorf was orphaned at twelve and sent to boarding school, then left as a young man for a job with a Swiss watch-exporting firm.

What relation was co-founder Alfred Davis to Hans Wilsdorf?

Brother-in-law Alfred Davis gave the firm half its first name, Wilsdorf & Davis; both surnames were dropped in 1915, when it became the Rolex Watch Co.

Besides brevity, why is Hans Wilsdorf said to have chosen the name Rolex?

It sounded like a watch being wound, the story goes; he also wanted a word that anyone could pronounce in any language and that would fit on a dial beside the retailer's own name.

Which wartime measure pushed Rolex to start moving its operations to Switzerland in 1915?

A steep customs duty on watches, a third of their value, led Wilsdorf to run exports from Bienne, where his movements were made; Geneva became the headquarters in 1919.

What name did Rolex give its 1926 waterproof and dustproof case?

Oyster cases sealed tight thanks to a patent Rolex bought in 1926 for a winding crown that screws down into the case, combined with a screw-down back and bezel.

In 1927 swimmer Mercedes Gleitze wore a Rolex for over ten hours in which waters?

The English Channel beat her that day, a cold October repeat of her crossing two weeks earlier, but the watch was still keeping time and Rolex told the story across the front page of the Daily Mail.

Which British driver endorsed Rolex after wearing one on his 1930s land speed record runs?

Malcolm Campbell had a Rolex on in 1935 when he became the first to drive at over 300 miles per hour, and his praise for it began the company's long association with motor racing.

What did Rolex patent in 1931, adding the word Perpetual to its watches?

A self-winding rotor, a half-moon weight that swings as the wearer moves, winds the watch; with no daily winding by hand, the screw-down crown could stay shut and keep water out.

Rolex built dive watches for which country's navy frogmen, who crippled two British battleships in 1941?

Italy's navy got the watches through the Florence instrument maker Panerai, which fitted its own glowing dials to Rolex-made cases and built complete watches itself only from the 1950s.

What kind of owner has held Rolex since Hans Wilsdorf died in 1960?

A charitable foundation in Geneva, set up by Wilsdorf and named after him, owns Rolex outright, which is why the company has no shareholders to answer to and publishes no financial results.

Which brand did Wilsdorf conceive as a lower-priced sister to Rolex?

Tudor gave Rolex dealers a less expensive watch to sell: bought-in movements fitted inside Rolex-made cases and bracelets, trading on the parent's name for reliability.

Roughly how many watches did Rolex make in 2023?

1 million, and a bit more: Rolex keeps its output under wraps, but Morgan Stanley's analysts put 2023 production at about 1.2 million watches, worth roughly 30 percent of the Swiss watch market.

Rolex uses 904L steel rather than the industry's usual 316L because it better resists what?

Corrosion, above all pitting by salt water, is what 904L shrugs off; Rolex borrowed the costly alloy from chemical plants and seawater cooling systems, and it also takes a brighter polish.

Rolex introduced ceramic Cerachrom bezels in 2005 to cure which flaw of aluminium ones?

Fading stopped with ceramic, which keeps its colour and resists scratches, but at a price: Rolex could at first make Cerachrom in a single colour only and needed until 2013 to manage two.

Which five-link Rolex bracelet made its debut on the first Datejust in 1945?

Jubilee marked the occasion: the Datejust was launched for the company's 40th anniversary, and its new five-piece-link bracelet took the celebratory name.

What job does the 'Cyclops' on the crystal of many Rolex watches do?

Magnifies the date: the lens was once simply glued to the crystal, so the deep-diving Sea-Dweller went without one for fifty years, until 2017, for fear the pressure would shift it.

Rolex's 1956 flagship was the first wristwatch to spell out what in full on its dial?

The day of the week joined the date on the Day-Date; Rolex made its flagship only in gold or platinum, which helped turn it into the watch of choice for heads of state.

Which US president was the first to wear a gold Day-Date?

Rolex had already been calling the bracelet the President bracelet since 1957.

Which airline asked Rolex to develop the dual-time GMT-Master for its crews?

Pan Am wanted its pilots to read Greenwich Mean Time, the reference they navigated by, beside local time on long-haul flights, hence the GMT in the name; the first watches went to its own crews.

Which 1953 achievement was the Rolex Explorer launched to celebrate?

The ascent of Everest was made by an expedition that Rolex had equipped with watches, and the company put the name Explorer on a dial later the same year.

What extra feature does the Rolex Explorer II carry for cavers who cannot see the sky?

An orange 24-hour hand circles the dial once a day against a fixed bezel, so a caver who has lost track of the sun can still tell noon from midnight.

What does the rotating bezel on a Rolex Submariner let a diver keep track of?

Time spent underwater is read off the bezel once its zero is set against the minute hand; it turns one way only, so a knock can only make a dive look longer, never dangerously shorter.

Which Bond actor wore the Rolex Submariner that collectors call the 'James Bond'?

Sean Connery wore a Submariner in Dr. No in 1962, and collectors now call that reference the 'James Bond Submariner' and pay a premium for it at auction.

From GoldenEye in 1995, James Bond switched from Rolex to which brand?

Omega got the part when costume designer Lindy Hemming picked a blue-dialled Seamaster for Pierce Brosnan's first outing, and Bond was still wearing one in No Time to Die in 2021.

The all-green Rolex Submariner is nicknamed the Hulk; what do collectors call the 2003 green-bezel, black-dial version?

Kermit arrived as a 50th-birthday present to the Submariner: Rolex marked the anniversary by swapping the usual black bezel for a bright green one.

Which French commercial diving company had Rolex Sea-Dwellers made for its divers with its own name on the dial?

Comex first bought Submariners specially adapted for its deep divers, then settled on the Sea-Dweller; watches with the firm's name on the dial are now among the most prized by collectors.

What does the Rolex Sea-Dweller's special valve release during decompression?

Helium from a saturation diver's breathing gas seeps into the watch over days under pressure; on the way back up it used to blow the crystal off, until Rolex gave it a way out.

In 1960 an experimental Rolex rode on the outside of which vessel to the deepest point in the ocean?

Trieste carried Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh nearly 11 kilometres down with the bulbous watch clamped to its hull, and it was still running when they surfaced.

Which film director's 2012 submarine carried a Rolex on its robotic arm to the Mariana Trench?

James Cameron piloted the Deepsea Challenger alone, the first solo dive to the ocean's deepest point, and the watch on the sub's arm kept running throughout.

Scientists at which laboratory tested the anti-magnetic Rolex Milgauss in the 1950s?

CERN sits a few miles from Rolex in Geneva and its physicists worked among powerful magnets; an iron shield inside the case protects the movement from their fields.

The Cosmograph Daytona takes its name from a place in which US state?

Florida's Daytona Beach has hard, flat sand where drivers chased speed records in the early 1900s; Rolex was official timekeeper of the speedway built nearby when it named its chronograph.

Which actor's own Rolex Daytona sold for $17.8 million in 2017, then a wristwatch auction record?

Paul Newman got it from his wife Joanne Woodward, engraved 'Drive Carefully, Me'; he later handed it to his daughter's boyfriend, James Cox, who was the one to sell it.

What scale on a Rolex Daytona's bezel lets a driver read average speed?

A tachymeter turns the time taken over a measured mile into a speed; when Rolex launched its racing chronograph in 1963 it moved the scale from the dial out to the bezel.

Which pizza chain rewarded franchisees who hit its sales targets with Rolex watches carrying its logo on the dial?

Domino's founder Tom Monaghan began in 1977 by promising the logo watch on his own wrist to a franchisee for a $20,000 sales week; the Rolex Air-Kings that followed are now collectors' pieces.

Rolex's 1971 caving watch is nicknamed after which film star, though no known photograph shows him wearing one?

Steve McQueen in fact wore a Rolex Submariner, as many photographs show; the nickname attached itself to a watch he is never seen in and has never come off.

In 1914 Kew Observatory gave a Rolex wristwatch a precision rating reserved until then for which timekeepers?

Marine chronometers were the most exacting timekeepers of the day; matching them let Wilsdorf advertise that a wristwatch, then dismissed by many men as a lady's trinket, could be a serious instrument.

Which football star, ordered by a court in 2007 to hand over his gold Rolex, turned in a fake?

O. J. Simpson owed the family of Ron Goldman millions under a civil judgment; their lawyer had the gold 'Submariner' examined, found it was a cheap copy and said he would give it back.

The first Yacht-Master was offered only in what material?

A steel-and-platinum version followed in 1997.

Which family-owned retailer did Rolex agree to buy in 2023?

Bucherer had sold Rolex watches since 1924, and when its third-generation owner Jörg Bucherer considered selling up, Rolex bought the chain itself and said it would go on trading under its own name.

Which racing driver signed with Rolex in 1968 and stayed over fifty years?

Jackie Stewart signed a year before the first of his three world titles; a 1966 crash that left him trapped and soaked in fuel had already made him a determined campaigner for safer racing.

The Beta 21, developed by Rolex and other Swiss makers in the 1960s, was what type of movement?

Quartz was the coming technology, yet Rolex fitted the shared Beta 21 to only a short run of watches, spent five years designing a quartz movement of its own and otherwise stayed mechanical.

Which RAF airmen did Hans Wilsdorf honour with the 'Air' watches Rolex launched as the Second World War ended?

Battle of Britain fliers were honoured because RAF pilots had taken to buying Rolexes with their own money in place of service-issue watches; of the Air-Lion, Air-Giant, Air-Tiger and Air-King, only the Air-King survives.

Rolex chronographs sent to Stalag Luft III prisoners may have timed guards before which 1944 escape?

The Great Escape sent 76 men out through the tunnel 'Harry' in March 1944; one of the watches, ordered from the camp by a corporal who worked there as a shoemaker, later sold at auction with Rolex's letters to him.

Rolex sponsors Daytona's endurance race; of which other race did it become official timekeeper?

Le Mans 24 Hours even lent its name to Rolex's racing chronograph in its earliest adverts, before 'Daytona' went on the dial in 1964.

James Bond wore a Submariner on screen, but which Rolex did his creator Ian Fleming wear himself?

Explorer: Fleming's own is thought to be the watch he had in mind when he described the Rolex on Bond's wrist in the novels.

Which Apocalypse Now star wore his own Rolex in the film, with its bezel removed?

Marlon Brando wore his own GMT-Master as the renegade Colonel Kurtz; the bezel came off during filming to make the watch less flashy, and he scratched 'M. Brando' into the back of the case himself.