I though I would share some previews with you for amazing and exclusive Rolex History stories we have coming up for 2010 on Jake's Rolex Watch Blog!!! The photo below is from the upcoming exclusive COMEX story on Jake's Rolex Watch Blog.
Henri Delauze is not only a diving legend, but he is also the founder and CEO of the French diving company COMEX. I asked Henri if we could take some pictures for the upcoming COMEX story that showed him wearing his trademark ROLEX COMEX SEA-DWELLER and as you see, he graciously obliged.
Rolex Coolness: Henri-Germain Delauze
Founder & CEO Of COMEX
The French COMEX/Cousteau Connection
Update: just to give you a frame of reference I included this profound photo of Hernri-Germani Dealuze that was taken in Southern France in Fontaine de Vaucluse in 1955 and it shows a young Jacques-Yves Cousteau at 45 years of age standing in front of a much younger Henri-Germain Delauze–at age 26–who would go on to found the revolutionary French diving company, COMEX. At the time Dalauze was a Cousteau team diver.
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The First Submariner In The Silent World
So here we see in this image, a young Jacques Cousteau wearing an early Rolex Submariner with no crown guards. I believe this photo was taken in 1955 on or around March 16, 1955 in the Red Sea as Jacques Cousteau was filming his first Academy Award winning movie, The Silent World. Rolex first introduced the Rolex Submariner at BaselFair in Switzerland in 1954–I believe in late March. This means this photo was taken one year after the first Rolex Submariner was introduced.
Cousteau began filming The Silent World on March 8, 1955 and completed filming on June 27, 1955 as the Calypso went into dry dock for major repairs in Marseille, France. [Marseille, France is where COMEX was founded six years later in 1961.] The Silent World was first released in France on February 15 of 1956 to critical acclaim, then released in Italy on September, 22 1956.
As Abel from Buenos Aires points out, the Rolex Submariner is likely a Reference 6200, 6204 or 6205 since it does not have the Mercedes Logo-like marker on the hour hand.
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The Right Stuff & Jacques Cousteau
The Two First Rolex SEA-DWELLERS
At the exact same time, in 1965, as Conshelf III was underway 328 feet below the sea, on the opposite side of the planet, in San Diego, California in the U.S.A., the United States Navy's SEA-LAB 2 project was underway, deep under the sea–with Scott Carpenter leading his team of U.S. Navy Aquanauts.
Scott Carpenter, aboard SEA-LAB 2, located in the Pacific Ocean had a telephone conversation with Jacques Cousteau's younger son, Philippe Cousteau who was aboard Conshelf III, located in the Mediterranean Ocean. Since they were both breathing a mixture of helium and oxygen, the both spoke like Donald-Duck.
The U.S. Navy decided to finally pursue Dr. Bond's ideas because they believed aquanauts living underwater in a zero-gravity-like-environment were very closely simulating the same conditions the NASA astronauts would soon be experiencing in space on their long journey to the moon, and who better to lead the team, than an experienced NASA astronaut and U.S. Navy test pilot, Scott Carpenter.
This is where the nexus I spoke about earlier in the story comes into play regarding the development of the Rolex SEA-DWELLER.
In order to best understand the metamorphosis of the Rolex Submariner into the Rolex SEA-DWELLER we have to examine the career of U.S. Navy test pilot, NASA Astronaut & SEA-LAB Aquanaut, Scott Carpenter.
Scott Carpenter was a U.S. Navy test pilot and was chosen as one of the Original 7 Mercury astronauts back in the late 1950s. Scott Carpenter is pictured below with his fellow Mercury astronauts and Scott is on the far left.
http://rolexblog.blogspot.com/search/label/COMEX
