Ask anyone on the street to name a Swiss watch brand, or any watch brand for that matter, and chances are they will say “Rolex”. It is a word synonymous with a certain quality and desirability, and, thanks to the unknowable production-line equations of Rolex, unavailability. It was James Bond’s watch, it has been to the depths of the Mariana Trench, it is the watch of presidents. It is an icon.
However, when Hans Wilsdorf, founder of both Rolex and Tudor, first started pushing the idea of a wristwatch, people wrote it off as a passing fad. This was 1905 and Wilsdorf was one of Britain’s major watch dealers.