Rolex watches

Rolex was founded in London in 1905 as Wilsdorf and Davis by Hans Wilsdorf and Alfred Davis. The Rolex name was created in 1908, and in 1919 the company moved to Geneva, where it is still headquartered. Since 1960 it has been owned by the Hans Wilsdorf Foundation, a private trust that also owns Tudor.

In 1926 Rolex introduced the Oyster, a waterproof and dustproof wristwatch case, and in 1931 it patented a self-winding mechanism with a Perpetual rotor. The Datejust followed in 1945 as a chronometer wristwatch with an automatically changing date, the Submariner diving watch in 1953 and the Day-Date in 1956. Other professional models include the GMT-Master dual-time watch of the mid-1950s and the Cosmograph Daytona chronograph.