Ben Clymer

And his idea was to make a hammer.

Something that would bounce back and forth like this to continue to power the watch.

Rolex said, let's go a different way.

Let's create a rotor.

So a weight that would oscillate around in a circle to power the watch.

That worked.

And Rolex had, actually, I remember the date.

It was 1933 because it had a 20-year patent on it.

And Patek Philippe, which was another stalwart of traditional watchmaking, saw this and said, oh shit, we need to do that too.

But they couldn't actually release anything until 20 years later because of the patent.

The Patek 2526, which is their first self-winding watch came out in 1953.

And that's a different thing altogether.

But effectively, Hans Wilsdorf said, I want the watches to be precise.

Check with the QA.

I want them to be waterproof.

Check with the Oyster case.

And I want them to be self-winding.

Check with the Perpetual.

So if you see Oyster Perpetual on any Rolex, which you'd see on all Rolexes now, Oysters are waterproof.

Perpetual isn't self-winding.