Smiths were the only watches worn on the summit of Everest in '53. The proof.

[verv]

It's posts like yours that keep me here.

Well done M4tt.

Yes, absolutely agreed. Stonking read. No doubt about it.

[bobbee]

Kudos to Matt, and also all other contributors.

[M4tt]

Cheers all, a bit of positive feedback is always a pleasure, although the fact is that this has been a decade or more of increasingly well informed debate with a lot of people who are better informed than I. I was just obsessive enough to pull it all together and tidy up the loose edges. What I need to do now is go away and write an equally convincing argument to demonstrate that Hillary was twenty nine years too late and the first watch on Everest was in fact one of these: