This year, Rolex celebrates 100 years of the Oyster. I know that Mercedes Gleitze’s swim and the subsequent publicity came the following year, but 1926 was when the first patents were filed and the first watches sold. I can be confident of this, as my very early Cushion Oyster carries the Glasgow date hallmark “d,” indicating 1926. In honour of this centenary, let’s chart the heritage of arguably the most impactful watch of all time across three of its most significant models.
Oyster
I would argue that the Oyster was the watch that changed watchmaking forever. But it wasn’t just the launch of the watch that proved disruptive, it was Hans Wilsdorf’s flair for publicity that truly made the difference. Around this time, he decided to hire S. T. Garland, a small, newly emerging London advertising agency, far smaller than the major Fleet Street and West End firms which dominated British advertising at the time.
It was probably Garland who came up with the idea of linking the Oyster with Gleitze’s swim, and it was definitely they who conceived the front-page advertisement in the Daily Mail. They most likely reinforced this publicity by having Rolex dealers display the new Oyster in a window display of a goldfish bowl filled with water and live fish, with the watch submerged inside.
These promotions proved that the wristwatch was now a viable everyday item and surely hastened the decline of the pocket watch’s dominance in men’s timekeeping. After the end of the First World War, wristwatches had become far more common, but they were still seen as delicate instruments needing protection from moisture, dust, and shocks. This was why the pocket watch still reigned supreme – until the arrival of the Oyster.
Oyster Datejust
Nineteen years after the Oyster’s debut, Rolex introduced another watch which dramatically changed people’s perception of timepieces: the Datejust. It’s important to understand that wristwatches with date indications existed long before the Datejust arrived, Rolex’s first date watch dates back to 1915. But pointer-date watches were inconvenient. The Datejust combined the four defining elements of the modern wristwatch for the first time: a waterproof case, chronometer-rated accuracy, self-winding movement, and a convenient date window at the 3 o’clock position.
The significance of that date window lay in the way the watch was positioned. At launch, it was available only in 18-carat gold, appealing to the upper-middle-class market. And, until about twenty years ago, what did most people in that bracket routinely do? Write cheques and letters, tasks for which a quick date reminder was essential.
Oyster Submariner
Nine years after the Datejust’s 1945 debut, Rolex changed the watch world once again with the launch of the Submariner. Buying a Cushion Oyster at the end of the 1920s didn’t mean you were going to swim the English Channel, just as buying a Rolex Submariner in the mid-1950s didn’t mean you were going to dive to 600 feet – but in both cases – the watches could survive the journey.
That was the Submariner’s key appeal: a watch that could withstand virtually any punishment its owner might inflict upon it. And it had one other – even more important impact – it became the archetype for practically every dive watch which followed; guaranteed depth reistance, black dial with large luminous indices and oversized luminous hands, and the rotating timing bezel became ubiquitous features, seen on every dive’s watch from the Eterna Kon-Tiki and the Omega Seamaster 300 to the Blancpain Fifty Fathoms.
As Rolex marks the centenary of the Oyster and its transformation of the wristwatch market forever, it’s worth looking back at its descendants and realising that they achieved precisely the same thing.
