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The Rolex Explorer II, The McQueen watch...or was it? It wasn't. However, it COULD be YOUR watch! And what's better than having another watch?
Anyways today Michael reviews the Rolex Explorer II and talks about it's history a bit and how Rolex designed this watch around cavers as opposed to divers (Submariner) and drivers (Daytona).
Check it out!
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#rolex #explorerii #16570
Today, Michael dives into some of the history of the Rolex Explorer II, alongside a full review of the watch!
The watch we're looking at today is a Rolex 16570 Explorer II with a Polar white dial, basically untouched. It's about as close to new old stock as you can get for a watch of its age, and it's absolutely beautiful.
But where did it come from? The Submariner's origin as a dive watch is clear, as is the origin of a watch like the Daytona as a racing chronograph. But the Explorer II? Well, it turns out it was invented for the sport/art of cave diving, or Spelunking. Spelunkers needed a watch that was not only highly visible in the dark, but also one that gave them the ability to read the time in terms of AM or PM since they'd be in caves and thus couldn't see the sun to determine what time of day it was. Rather than a more traditional AM/PM indicator like you might see on some watches, where it basically looks like a moonphase except it's the sun and the moon rotating around the disc in question, Rolex opted for something closer to a GMT in execution. The "GMT" hand on the original Explorer IIs were tied to the main hour hand, and were essentially set as a function of whether it was daytime or nighttime, though later models eschewed this purpose in exchange for a true GMT functionality.
Rolex's first attempt at this was the 1655, released in 1971 and ran until 1985, a reasonably long lifespan for a Rolex reference. One of its more notable features is the brand didn't just lume the hour markers, as is tradition, but also every half hour mark between them to allow for lumed plots to coincide with the 24 hour graduations on the fixed steel bezel. From there we have the 16550, which ran from 1985 to 1989, and introduced a more traditional Rolex sport watch dial layout with rounded indices and the option for a black or white dial. Most importantly, though, the caliber 3085 was introduced into the watch, allowing for the second hour hand to function as a GMT.
Rolex followed this model up with the 16570, which ran for a whopping 22 years straight (1989-2011), and was basically a perfected version of the 16550 in many respects. It introduced the caliber 3185, a perfected version of the previous movement, and saw dials with tritium, Luminova, and eventually SUper Luminova lume markers. And then came the 216570, the current model Explorer II and the watch that divided opinions like no other. The case was increased to 42mm, the orange second hour hand returned, and the overall footprint of the watch was just expanded.