The history of the Rolex Stainless Submariner
1950- to the present day is submerged in total confusion and disagreement yet is colorful, exciting, and addictive especially the early years. A message from Rolex Geneva in "Keeping in time with Oceanography" states and I quote "The History of Rolex is intimately tied to Mans conquest of the Ocean."In the early 1950's Rene P Jeanneret, a director at RWC and an amateur enthusiast in the diving world, was a major force in encouraging Rolex to manufacture a "sports" watch with a diving theme yet also be an elegant dress watch.
On 30th September 1953, Rolex, never one to miss a marketing opportunity, created major worldwide interest when a specially manufactured Rolex Submariner watches accompanied Professor Auguste Piccard and his son, Jacques on their new bathyscaphe to a world record depth of 10335ft below the ocean surface.
The innovative technology needed to produce this special watch were then applied to the Submariner models
The rotating bezel enabled divers to keep accurate track of his time elasped underwater. Also the same year a full length underwater film "Le monde du silence" by Dumas and Cousteau feature the Rolex Submariner watches . These were masterstrokes for the Rolex publicity machine.
The history of the Rolex Stainless Steel Submariner 1950- to the present day is submerged in total confusion and disagreement yet is colorful, exciting, and addictive especially the early years. A message from Rolex Geneva in "Keeping in time with Oceanography" states and I quote "The History of Rolex is intimately tied to Mans conquest of the Ocean."
No one is quite sure which exact model was the first to be released for general sale or why there were different dial designs for a particular model.
For example sometimes the depth ratings had feet followed by meters, then meters followed by feet, some models had 369 explorer type dials, there were gloss dials with gilt or silver print, matt dials with white print, outer minute tracks, and of course red print on the first date submariners.
The early years was especially remarkable because there were many different models in such a short period of time when compared to the later years. I believe the reason for this is that the Rolex Submariner watches Company (RWC) was experimenting with the submariner and that goes a long way to explain all the above.
