ROLEX LED and more...

[Huertecilla]

Apart from some rare mentions without details I could not find anything about the fabled Rolex LED watch.

That is... untill the book by Trueb, Ramm, Wenzig; Die Elektrifzierung des Armbanduhr.
Op page 183 they even produce a photo!!!

In 1975 and 1976 a team of three engineers travelled to the US to source parts for a LED watch on behalf of CEH and Rolex.
The joint idea which they went sourcing for was a LED watch with a Forme Analogique, analogue display.
With the results CEH want one way and Rolex another although they did share the further development of the basics.
CEH decided on a permanent display with solar cells to provide extra energy and Rolex decided on display on demand, thus omitting the solar panel.
The hour ´hand´ was indicated by 4 LEDs in a row and the minute ´hand´ by 7.
The engineers developed it all the way to pre-production and produced 5 complete prototype watches in 1978.
Bossman Heiniger however dicided that it would not be compatible with the classic mechanicals and binned the project. He was after all in luxury goods, not in watches.

So it díd exist!
... and were distroyed

There is quite a bit more very surprising info on the Rolex participation in electronics in this book. I was véry much surprised to learn how many differently engineered prototypes they developed but most by the fact that they participated in several seperate joint ventures. Sometimes even with bóth Rolex Geneva and Rolex Biel as two participants in the same venture.
It is also the only source whih I have found sofar that provides detailed info on the quartz calibers used in the Celline range. Technical but also per example that from 1990 till to date some 100.000 cal.6621 were produced.

Disappointing to read is that they binned two very promising projects to develop a high accuray quartz caliber:
They bought 1000!! 2.4 MegaHertz Z-cut quartz resonators from CEH in 1984 with which they developed a véry accurate caliber of which prototypes 50 were produced that only deviated a few seconds per year.
The other was a twin quartz with a standard 32kHz oscilator and the 2.4 Mega. The 22mm. 3V Lithium battery gave 10 years pr. This caliber brought it to a fore-series of 400. This is the caliber which is illustrated on Oysterquartz.net.
All were scrapped. Heidiger undoubtedly realised that the luxury mechanicals would be in their underpants if he brought these contemporary tech high end calibers out. He was after all in the business of making money, not watches.

Petrus

[SASM]

Nice that you are back again as I was already missing your articles. I have the book, so I will check immediately...

[Huertecilla]

isn´t it ?!

The info about Rolex and modern tech answers quite conclusively that the brand is not about watches

[Kasper]

did it looked like this ?

[Huertecilla]

did it looked like this ?

Not in the léast.

Keyword; ´analogue´.

Secondly Heidiger was adamant that none such watch even as a prototype could be similar to the traditional ones. Hence the shortlived Oysterquartz got a different case and bracelet too.
Yes shortlived as there was only one main production run of the calibers and Rolex did véry little to market it, taking care not to pull the rug from under the performance and other properties of the mechanicals. Successors were as seen above developed but binned.
I have little doubt as to why; the basically maintenance free hígh accuracy and perpetual calendar twin quartz with 10 year battery would have killed off the mechanical goose laying the golden eggs. Both in sales margin and maintenance/repair. The far superior watch engine was binned in favour of making luxury good money.

[SASM]

This is the photo on page 183.




There´s some text regarding the module: In fact the book says that the module consists of 60x7 diodes. The smaller hand for the hours has 4 LEDs, the larger 6 and the seconds are displayed through a ring around the hands.

From my point of view all diodes needed bondings from the top so that this was a construction which probably would have been very hard to produce.

[Kasper]

yeah i always wondered why nobody was making a different style of time display then the numbers with led.

[LEDluvr]

Ah - so we finally see what the Rolex actually looked like. Thanks for research Huertecill and Hanno.

[cobra007]

I kind of like this one. With new oLed technology this would be quite simple to realize but in the early 70's it was a different story. Of course they wouldn't have been able to ask $10k (or some other ridiculous amount) for this watch. The design by itself, not bad, but yeah as was said already, Rolex is about money and not design, neither watches.

Michel

[vpn]

That's something very interesting. The arrangement of the LEDs on that prototype made it hugely expensive to produce, especially because it'd have required an insanely high amount of wirebonds.

It's also interesting to see that it adopted a stem setting system, a bit like the Optel LCDs. If it would've come to production, it could've been the first and only LED watch with that setting system, if we exclude the Bulova N4, whose stem worked more like a button rather than a traditional crown.

It surely would've been fascinating to see this kind of arrangement in a production LED watch, it could've been the ancestor of all those watches with LCD hands that debuted on the market in the late '70s and all the '80s.