Ben Clymer

That's older than the United States of America.

Rolex was founded by a guy named Hans Wilsdorf, who's Austrian, but he was a total Anglophile.

He really just was obsessed with the United Kingdom in the early part of the 1900s.

So he goes into the UK and starts a company called Wilsdorf & Davis in 1905.

And back then, you have to remember that, like, forget digital watchmaking.

Wristwatches were not a thing.

The wristwatch was really a product of World War I, which was guys in trenches, trench watches, were strapping pocket watches to their wrists so that they didn't have to pull it out of their pocket.

It was a little bit more complex, but that's it at a high level.

And Wilsdorf in 1905 decides to focus on wristwatches, which is like crazy.

I mean, it was a little bit, frankly, like Elon Musk focusing on EVs 10, 15 years ago.

People just weren't ready for it.

So he committed to doing the wristwatch in the early part of the 1900s, 1905, 1908.

And in 1908, he creates a company called Rolex.

And again, there's lots of hearsay on why it's Rolex.

I think at the very least, it's safe to say that he chose that word because it's the same pronunciation in all languages.

Some people say it's the sound it makes.

There's no confirmation on that.

But effectively, what he does is he's just a distributor.

So he's not making anything.

from 1905 to about 1908.