Congratulations on a fascinating and well researched post.
Interestingly the current edition of National Geographic has this advert on its inside cover.
Never let facts get in the way of a good marketing story... whilst they don’t claim that Rolex watches were worn they’re still pushing the association and implying it?
It's what they've done since 1953. And the first waterproof wristwatch etc etcOriginally Posted by timor54
What with waiting lists and ADs retaining cards and randomised serial numbers etc I'm afraid Rolex have lost any affection or respect from me.
Their watches are good -- good, not great -- but their marketing is phenomenal and, at times, mendacious.
Still, the fanboys will queue up (literally) to get their hands on these boring, stale, mass-produced Veblen bling bracelets.
I honestly can't see how they are an option for true watch lovers though.
Amazing work, the only problem is, I've just spent 2 hours reading through it ;-)
Eddie
Whole chunks of my life come under the heading "it seemed like a good idea at the time".
As long as you are resting while reading Eddie.
Cheers,
Brian
I'm glad you enjoyed it. There will probably never be a more timely moment to establish what happened, as you produce what has to be the most complete homage to the original watch so far.
Now all we need is a case that has more Dennison and less Rolex DNA in the second generation subsecond version of the Explorer...
- - - Updated - - -
I've found that most things I write help people drift off to sleep.
No surprise?
Whole chunks of my life come under the heading "it seemed like a good idea at the time".
Ironically, it was with the US National Geographic Ascent in 1963 that Rolex finally got to the summit!Congratulations on a fascinating and well researched post.
Interestingly the current edition of National Geographic has this advert on its inside cover.
Never let facts get in the way of a good marketing story... whilst they don’t claim that Rolex watches were worn they’re still pushing the association and implying it?
What's ten years between friends?
A difference of a mere decade? Pah, let's give them both a medal!
Joint first place goes to Rolex AND Smiths (in alphabetical order).
I'm so glad Eddie has bought the rights to Smiths. I can buy and wear a new Smiths. Was it all made in-house? No, but were Rolex in 1953? (No. They were retailers who badged up other people's work, not watchmakers. Smiths made the movement and even the case was English: Dennison, from the jewellery quarter in Birmingham.)
What would be really cool would be an all-English watch: case, movement (inc. springs, jewels, oils). strap: everything. (You can buy one, of course -- see Frodsham's offerings, for example, but they cost more than I earn in a year . . . . )
I do wonder, though, whether with 3D printing if a simple 15j subsecond could be manufactured entirely in the UK. It wouldn't be cheap but could it be done for less than, say, £2k?
I digress. Top work Matt and another bump to the summit, sorry I mean top. A bump to the top. ;-)
[QUOTE=Rev-O;5261612]What's ten years between friends?
Well, it's enough time to put the first dive watch, the Enicar Seapearl 600, which also, quite coincidentally, was the watch that outperformed both the Fifty Fathoms and the Submariner in US Navy trials for a dive watch on the summit, and follow that up with a Chinese offering from Tianjin (Seagull) which is just a teeny bit ironic.
https://wornandwound.com/affordable-...-seapearl-600/
As usual, they got the wrong watch, the Everest version had weird hamster ear style lugs. If you fancy buying one be careful - Enicar had its own radium facility and so they are really quite impressively radioactive.
Seems like even the fans (and I am one myself, although not an uncritical blind follower) have accepted this
https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/vint...23723-s10.html
Noticeable (and most telling) is Phillip Stahl's lack of reply.
Yep.
National Geographic wants the money...but also knows facts
I saw that advert as well. You need to read between the lines to see that they did NOT have the watch AT the top.
Like Rolex . . . .
In the link below... you want the second part, titled:
1952 Rolex Oyster Perpetual – the Everest connection
Professional Diver Nigel Band And The Unusual Rolex Sea-Dweller And Oyster Perpetual Models That Plumbed The Depths And Scaled The Heights
https://quillandpad.com/2020/11/25/p...d-the-heights/
Over the years the Everest team continued to hold regular five-yearly reunions to celebrate the event, sometimes at Pen-Y-Grwyd in Wales, where they had trained for the expedition, so Nigel Band grew up surrounded by family friends and acquaintances who were household names at the time.
On one occasion he took Tenzing Norgay’s wife into London to choose cassettes of “the latest pop music” for her family back home – Status Quo and Queen he remembers. He also recalls his mother turning up to collect him from boarding school one half-term “in a large blue Citroen estate, with Ed Hillary in the passenger seat.” This earned him considerable kudos with his incredulous classmates, but on the way home, “Ed offered to drive and promptly crashed the car while negotiating the slip road onto the M4 motorway.”
From these meetings he recalls Jan Morris (Times reporter on the 1953 expedition who very recently passed away, and James Morris at the time) giving a talk, leaning on the lectern, and intriguingly twirling her spectacles with one hand as she spoke, in stark contrast to the other members’ more formal presentations. And during a talk by Sir Edmund Hillary, one stalwart leaning over to another member and muttering “of course it wasn’t a Rolex he was wearing at the top, it was a Smiths . . . ”.
But that’s a topic for another article.
George Band rations Royal Geographical Society
This looks like a Rollie to me.
Every watch a story.
Agreed. Also I think the strap (especially the stitching) doesn't look like the one on Sir Ed's "Summit Smiths" on display in the musuem but does resemble that on the Rolexes (irrc).
Of course, this assumes that the straps haven't been changed! Pretty certain Hillary's hasn't been.
Yes, Band wore a Rolex 6098 on Everest in '53. ... And actually reading the article demonstrates that better than I ever could. Mind you, the bit about two tranches of Rolex is not bourne out by the RGS archives...
But I'm now absolutely certain that Mallory made it to the summit.
Last edited by M4tt; 26th November 2020 at 17:34.
Oddly, if you go to the Rolex Passion Report website you'll see that Philipp Stahl's most recents posts are about Rolex & Everest.
(Both are actually old posts "bumped" up to the top, seemingly unedited).
Unsurprisingly neither posts mention the fact that Rolex conceded to Smiths in that letter (a copy of which I emailed to Stahl, so I know he has the information!)
Also disappointingly neither article has been revised to include the news of Jan Morris' death.
Stahl leaves his earlier claim unmodified -- "it will always remain a mystery if Rolex was literally on the summit" -- despite new facts emerging.
It's not a mystery. They weren't. At least not for another decade.
Well, that's what you get from an unashamedly biased blog but it's now a matter of record that Smiths were first to the top; Stahl knows it and it is deceitful of him to re-post old material without emending it.
A crime of "passion", I suppose.
Just wanted to say thank you to M4tt and others who have posted on this thread. I found it very interesting. I bought a PRS-25 recently as a 70th birthday present for my Dad and used this thread to put together some info on the Smiths/Rolex story that inspired it. He was thrilled with the present and enjoyed reading some of the history of the brands.
One of the greatest threads ever on tz-uk
And now, a Smiths meet-up is in the offing!
https://forum.tz-uk.com/showthread.p...94#post5987694
These are fairly recent. The second one is gold. I love the reference to "English Air".
A watch journey. Smiths and Everest content, but not *that* Smiths.
https://forums.timezone.com/index.ph...=0#msg_7663375
Horological Journal: 1953 Rolex, Smiths, Mt. Everest secret letters revealed...
https://forums.timezone.com/index.ph...89#msg_7712966
Every watch a story.
Thanks for posting that; seems determinative…
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