កន្លែងដែលត្រូវលក់នាឡិកា Rolex Oyster Perpetual | ការទិញក្នុងតម្លៃខ្ពស់ | JEWEL CAFE

The history of Rolex started from London. Currently, there are around 600 watchmakers in Switzerland, many of them, as a matter of course, had founded more than 100 years ago. However, there’s only a handful of them who have continued till today without stop. One of them is Rolex. At 1881, the founder of Rolex, Hans Wilsdorf born in the land of Bavaria, Germany. After he lost his parent at 12, he got employed by Clio Conten in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland after he graduated. He then got a job exporting watches to England, where he developed his talent as a businessman and gained experience at a young age. After that, in 1903, at the age of 22, he moved to London, where two years later, in 1905, he founded Wilsdorf & Davis, the predecessor to Rolex.

Five years later, in search of "a word that is creative and easy for everyone in the world to say", the brand that we all know and love today, Rolex, was named. The company then entered into a supply contract with Egler, a Swiss company skilled in the manufacture of precision instruments, to supply the movements for watch. In 1910, it was awarded the highest level of the Swiss Official Accuracy Test, and in 1914, it was awarded the highest prize at the Kew Observatory. Hans Wilsdorf's next goal was to develop a robust case to protect the movement from dust and moisture. In 1926, with the help of the Oyster Company, he developed and patented a case made of a hollowed-out block of metal with a screw-in crown. With that, the Oyster Case, the mechanics synonym of Rolex that is inherited until present day, was born.

The capability of this Oyster Case was known by the world through a soon-to-be-legend event. That is, the crossing of the Straits of Dover by Miss Mercedes Gleitz, a stenographer in London, in 1927. She achieved this feat with recorded time of 15 hours 15 minutes, with Rolex Oyster on her wrist. The Rolex that still working fine under this harsh condition proved the water-proving capability of Oyster Case, and this trigger the acceleration of development of water-prove watch throughout the watchmaker industry.

With the success of the Oyster Case, Rolex made its technology well-known to the world, but their next step was to create a self-winding mechanism, the development of so-called perpetuals. In 1931, it became the world's first wristwatch to achieve a full 360-degree self-winding mechanism, which successfully overcame the inefficiency of self-winding that had previously been a problem. It has made a great leap forward in winding efficiency and has further enhanced the competency of Rolex. The Rolex’s famous Oyster Case mounted with this perpetual movements gave birth to the Oyster Perpetual, that is known as the “Bubbleneck” in the antique market today.

The rotor used to wind the mainspring is installed so that it covers the movement, making it thicker than before. In order to accommodate this, the back casing swelled like a bubble, hence the name. In 1945, Oyster Perpetual was equipped with a revolutionary new invention that gave birth to another new model, DateJust. As the name implied, the calendar date will switch instantly when the time reach 12 am, it was a groundbreaking mechanic at that time. Rolex's three major inventions, the Oyster case in 1926, the Perpetual mechanism in 1931, and the Datejust mechanism in 1945, marked the completion of Rolex's vision of the practical watch.