Rolex

Rolex was founded in London in 1905, when 24-year-old German-born Hans Wilsdorf and his brother-in-law Alfred Davis set up "Wilsdorf and Davis," a company that fitted Swiss movements into cases made by local watchmakers. From the very start, at a time when the wristwatch was considered impractical and inaccurate compared with the pocket watch, Wilsdorf believed that the future of watchmaking belonged on the wrist — a conviction that led him to register the "Rolex" trademark in 1908: a short name, easy to pronounce in any language and well suited to being engraved on a dial.

In 1915 the company changed its name to "Rolex Watch Co. Ltd.," and once the First World War ended, British luxury taxes and the post-war economic downturn pushed Wilsdorf to move the business to Switzerland: in 1919 the company settled in Geneva, where in 1920 it took the name "Montres Rolex SA," later shortened simply to "Rolex SA." The headquarters has remained in the Swiss city ever since, at the heart of the country's fine watchmaking industry.

1926 marks one of the most important turning points in the brand's history: the patent for the Oyster case, the first truly waterproof and dustproof screw-down case, which Rolex put through a very public test the following year when swimmer Mercedes Gleitze crossed the English Channel wearing one around her neck, coming out the other side in full working order. In 1931 came the second major breakthrough, the Perpetual rotor, a self-winding mechanism using an oscillating mass that Rolex patented — which, combined with the Oyster case, gave rise to the "Oyster Perpetual" concept still at the core of most of the brand's production today.

Since 1960 the company has been owned by the Hans Wilsdorf Foundation, a private foundation set up by the founder himself shortly before his death to guarantee the brand's independence — Rolex is therefore neither publicly traded nor controlled by an outside group. Today Rolex employs several thousand people across Geneva and its other Swiss facilities and produces over a million watches a year, keeping production almost entirely in-house, from smelting its own gold to building its movements and final assembly.