PRESTIGE
The English actress and singer Evelyn Layhe
Today almost nothing works without design. From the automobile to the train: everything is designed. Freaky members of the designer generation indulge in frustration-reducing designer drugs in exalted designer furniture. Researchers also give their research a design. And with good reason: the term stands for nothing other than design. And logically, no object can avoid that. Consequently, those watches that are among the oldest machines of mankind have always been designed. There were never any serious discussions about their shape when they were worn in the pocket. Apart from a few exceptions, they were round. Just like the movements that ticked in the cases. Just like the circles that describe the constantly rotating pointer tips. Analogous to the infinite cycle of coming and going. Round is the starting from and the return to the origins. Things were somewhat different with wristwatches. In the 20th century they gradually became synonymous with portable timepieces. Wristwatches were ideally suited to the era of departure, liberation from traditional constraints and gender emancipation. HANS WILSDORF AND THE PERFECT WRISTWATCH A man who recognized the future significance of the ticking objects and consistently used them for his business success, came from the Bavarian city of Kulmbach. After his business education and his first career steps in Switzerland, Hans Wilsdorf moved to London in 1905. In the British metropolis, he took on the subject of the wristwatch in an inimitable way. Under the name Rolex, which he had invented and registered in 1908, he created an unprecedented worldwide success. At the beginning there were round pocket watch derivatives. Robust and, above all, precise, because the highest value was awash with all marketing water. The fact that water was able to almost freely penetrate the movement and cause considerable damage was an immensely disturbing fact. In this regard, a watch on your wrist was naturally exposed to much greater demands than one in your pocket. In particular, if you did not take it off while washing your hands. This was especially the case with the popular edged models, as the bezels and case backs were regarded as critical points. Other weaknesses were the winding and hand-setting crowns, including the shaft leading to the movement.
In the early 1920s, when the wristwatch only had around a 35 percent market share, Hans Wilsdorf tackled this problem enthusiastically. 1923 brought a patent for hermetically sealed cases with an internal movement container, developed by the Swiss manufacturer Francis Baumgartner. Because the bezel had to be completely unscrewed to clamp down the tension spring and that the sealing materials used promised no long-term safety, Rolex relied upon a purely mechanical design without any problematic materials: 1. hermetic housing closure, by screwing together of the individual water-resistant parts to each other, 2. as well as appropriately interlocking glass of synthetic material, and 3. a winding and hand-setting crown, which reliably protects the movement from moisture, even in daily use. To this end, the screw crown was invented by Georges Peret and Paul Perregaux in 1925 and fit perfectly. Rolex acquired this idea and in 1926 applied for patent protection for the waterproof “Oyster” casing. The first public appearance of the ticking “oyster” was not long in coming. On October 7, 1927 an escorted Mercedes
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