Rolex Turn-O-Graph - Oyster Perpetual Datejust Turn-O-Graph Review | SwissWatchExpo [Watch Review]

Описание: The Rolex Turn-o-graph is one of the most underrated watches from the brand, but it has a very colorful history. It’s actually an important watch in Rolex’s past– and one that paved the way for its more popular models today.

Our watch experts Creed and Michael discuss the history of Rolex Turn-o-Graph and show you different models, from vintage to modern.

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Transcript:

Fresh From the Showcase here at SwissWatchExpo. We're going to be talking about the Rolex Turnograph today.

This watch has a lot of history going all the way back to 1937 well, yeah, I didn't realize it was that old. Yeah, so the very first original turning bezel was in 1937 it was called the Zerographe. The Zerographe was an experimental watch that they produced only 12 of. Interestingly enough, it was a manual wind and it was a chronograph, but that was pretty valuable. It's not only valuable, it's rumored that there's only seven out of the original 12 that actually exist in the world. Nobody knows what happens to the others. So scan for one at a yard sale. Yes, sure. You would easily miss it because it looks nothing like what you would imagine. It's a very thick case that looked eventually like the sub mirror, because it was a chronograph.

It had a push button on the very top right hand corner. So if you look at the watch itself, they in Breitling had moved the pusher for the chronograph from the center of the crown up to the top of the case. Now, this kind of as a Breitling captain of many years threw me for a loop because Breitling introduced the idea of moving the pusher from the center of the crown at the top of the case, and yet for some reason, this Zerographe had it on this Turnograph bezel that we know now. It's a very strange watch, but it's a very thick looking bezel and almost looks like a toy, and in fact, the bezel is so thick, it looks a lot thicker than the GMT bezel that we see today on the watches. And with that strange chronograph push button at the top, it just doesn't look anything like a Rolex.

So you would easily miss this watch. Later on. In 1953 Rolex decided that they were in fact going to introduce attorney bezel for a sports watch. Obviously it preceded the submariner and it proceeded the GMT, which didn't appear until 1955 it's also considered the very first pilot's watch by Rolex and why did this watch become so popular in the first place? It was officially the United States air force demonstration team, a aerobatic demonstration teams official watch called the Thunderbirds, and there were a handful of these watches produced for pilots. The bezel was for navigational purposes also for timing. Certain events that they were, they needed to Mark times when they were meeting up at certain way points. They didn't have anything at that time to see on their wrist or to recognize quickly. There were a lot of other reasons that this bezel was useful, not just for that.

That's why they call it Rolexes first tool watch. Interesting. Then did it ever say Thunderbird on the diet? It did. Only for the Thunderbirds. Okay. Something that Rolex was later criticized for because that never appeared. This was U S market only and that never appeared on that watch itself for the civilian market. Now, one of the other things that Rolex did, which garnered them a lot of criticism, they actually took the name Turnograph off the dial throughout the years as well. And in fact, in 1977 they completely discontinued the Turnograph name on the dial of the watch, leaving it to just the a date just with a turnable bezel for all intensive purposes.

Still, they referred to it as the Turnograph and all of their production and all of their advertisement throughout the years. But some of them, they didn't call it a Thunderbird. That's really one of those nicknames.

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