Novis Watches

Rolex USA Unveils the New Day-Date with a Different Size and Caliber

The Rolex Day-Date was first introduced in 1956 and it is the last flagship model created by Hans Wilsdorf the founder of Rolex. Many believe it is his ultimate achievement. Otherwise known as the “President’s watch,” the Rolex Day-Date is being worn by presidents, visionaries, important leaders and CEOs all over the world. It’s considered the ultimate symbol of success, power and prestige.

History of the Rolex Day-Date

Rolex transformed calendar legibility with its Datejust in 1945, and it was the first wristwatch chronometer to show the date at 3 o’clock in the window. The Cyclops lens, which was also created by Rolex, would be added a few years later in 1953 to further enhance the reading of the date. Wilsdorf perfected the modern calendar in 1956 with the Day-Date by adding the fully spelled out day of the week in a window at 12 o’clock on the watch’s dial.

Day-Date was the first time ever that a watch showed the day in full together with the date.

FYI: The Day-Date’s calendar has 26 language options, from European languages to Arabic and Chinese. There’s also Russian, Hebrew, Greek, Japanese, Scandinavian languages, Indonesian and even Latin.)

Reading of the calendar is easy because it displays the day and date in its own apertures. And thanks to its mechanism which is also patented by Rolex, the date disks can move forward to the next day at midnight. This function was once dubbed the “miracle at midnight” because it could change in a millisecond.

New Case

Day-Date which is available in gold or platinum used to be available only in a 36-mm-diameter case. Now, there is the all new 40-mm-diameter case, alongside the 36-mm version.

It is worth mentioning that the platinum version has a fixed bezel, whereas the gold versions – there are 3 of them: Everose, white and yellow gold – have fluted bezels. All models feature the Twinlock screwed-down caseback, Twinlock double-sealed crown, and have fully polished cases. It is water resistant for up to a hundred meters.

It has a sapphire crystal which is resistant to scratches to protect the dial. It also has  a cyclops lens over the date, and the time is still visible even in direct sunlight due to its double anti-reflective coating.

New Dial

You can see the words “Day-Date,” “Oyster Perpetual” and “Superlative Chronometer Officially Certified” written on the Rolex Day-Date dial . Each of the Day-Date models have unique laser engraved motifs over the dial except for the yellow gold. The platinum version features a dial in ice blue and has a diagonal sunray pattern; the white-gold features a nice silver dial with a quadrant design; the rose-gold version has a dial in “sundust” with a stripe sunray pattern finish; while the yellow-gold has a champagne-colored dial and a sunray finish.

The yellow-gold and white variants of the Day-Date have new hours markers in Roman numerals, all have elements that are separately hand positioned, coupled with indexes. On the other hand, the platinum and rose-gold models have indexes only.

New movement

 “Superlative Chronometer” was presented by Rolex many years ago specifically in the 1950s to describe the accuracy of its chronometers. It was name “superlative” because it far exceeded other chronometers available. In 1956, the Day-Date was one of the pioneering models to meet the precision requirements which is why it carries the designation “Superlative Chronometer Officially Certified” on every dial. In 1973 the Swiss Official Chronometer Testing Institute (COSC) was created and it was a merging of the many Official Watch Rating Centers, and it created a much stricter criteria. So the Official chronometer testing certificates which gave citations dissolved.