50 Years Since Rolex Deep Sea Special Plunged 11km
It's fifty years since Rolex and the bathyscaphe Trieste re-wrote the record books when they plunged to a depth of 10,900 meters (35,000 feet) in the Mariana Trench. The watch didn't even blink.
On January 23, 1960, 200 miles off the island of Guam in the Pacific Ocean, a third generation Rolex prototype of the Deep Sea Special was strapped to the side of the Swiss made submersible. It was designed to hold up to the extraordinary pressures expected at that phenomenal depth– eight tons per square inch.
US Navy Lieutenant Don Walsh skippered the vessel down to its final landmark position along with Swiss oceanographer Jacques Piccard. When the adventurous duo re-surfaced they noted the watch was still in perfect working order.
Not prone to hyperbole, several days after the descent Piccard wrote to the Rolex headquarters in Geneva: "Happy to announce that your watch works as well at 11,000 meters as it does on the surface.”
Their trip still stands as the deepest ever undertaken, it led to a new understanding of marine life and cemented Rolex's position as the watch of sea-farers
The elite diving community adopted Rolex as their brand, emphasized by the fact that the Rolex Submariner was the watch of choice for the US Naval School for Deep Sea Divers and for the US Navy’s SEA-LAB program.
