THE TOUGH STUFF ROLEX EXPLORER
People go on expeditions, but watches help them to stay on course and on time
When Edmund Hillary got to the top of Everest in he spent about a quarter of an hour scouring the surrounding mountainscapes for other places to climb Before beginning the descent he declined to have his photo taken Imagine that now Tenzing Norgay did pose for a picture but only because Hillary wanted to document the feat not because the Sherpa thought he looked awesome with an ice pick Both men became celebrities but this wasn’t what they were looking for they just wanted to climb
Others wanted as much publicity from the expedition as possible Behind the scenes two companies were working very hard to be seen as the watchmaker that helped conquer the world’s highest mountain In the Swiss corner was Rolex in the British corner was S Smith & Sons later Smiths a company that started as a watch and clockmaker in and diversified into making instruments for cars boats and planes
Rolex was one of the first brands to fully understand the power of advertising From the Twenties it took out newspaper ads showing watches surviving crossChannel swims and land speed records The Everest attempt was right up Rolex’s street and it kitted out Hillary’s team with watches and made sure as many people as possible knew about it
Rolex was streets ahead in the publicity game but Smiths did at least have some home advantage The British expedition was keen to use as much homegrown equipment as possible and Smiths provided watches and also offered altimeters and oxygen gauges Both Rolex and Smiths watches went on the expedition but they were shared among the man team The question is which watches made it to the summit with Hillary and Tenzing?
Rolex adverts were careful to say that they supplied watches to the expedition rather than that they were worn to the summit A Smiths advert was more direct quoting Hillary as saying “I carried your watch to the summit It worked perfectly ”
Whatever the truth of who wore what on a chilly mountain the real winner is clear Rolex is the best known watch brand in the world while Smiths stopped making watches in the Seventies Don’t feel too bad for the plucky Brit though it pivoted to other parts of the business and now exists as an engineering giant making everything from medical scanners to fuel lines for aircraft
The watch given to the Everest party was an Oyster Perpetual, a forerunner to the Explorer, a mainstay of the Rolex range almost 70 years on. The watch makes a stylish statement, but cuts a relatively modest figure. The latest generation has a case size of just 36mm (down from 39mm). The new-gen Explorer has Rolex’s Calibre 3230 self-winding movement. The Oyster case is guaranteed waterproof to 100 metres. The case is cut from a solid block of Oystersteel – a corrosionresistant alloy. Caseback is hermetically screwed down with a special tool that allows only Rolex watchmakers to access the movement.