Rolex
Rolex SA () is a Swiss luxury watchmaker. Originally founded as "Wilsdorf and Davis" by Hans Wilsdorf and Alfred Davis in London in 1905, the company registered "Rolex" as the brand name of its watches in 1908. In 1919, the company moved its base of operations to Geneva, Switzerland in order to avoid heavy taxation from a recovering post-war Britain, and "Montres Rolex S.A." was registered as the new company name by Hans Wilsdorf in Geneva in 1920. Since 1960, the company has been owned by the Hans Wilsdorf Foundation, a private family trust.
Rolex Daytona
This original series was in very short supply by the early 1990s, which led to a second series to meet demand, introduced in 1988 with Reference 16520. The second series uses a modified automatic winding movement, originally manufactured by Zenith for their "El Primero" watch, designated by Zenith as Calibre 3019PHC. The movement was originally designed in 1969 after development commenced in 1962 and remains the highest VPH (vibrations per hour) mass-produced chronograph movement on the market at 36,000 VPH. After Zenith was sold to the American company of the same name in 1971, the company discontinued production of mechanical movements in 1975. However, Charles Vermot, a senior engineer for Martel Watch Company (where the El Primero was made, and which had been acquired in 1959 by Zenith) had, over a period of months, secretly disassembled the tooling for the El Primero and stored it in the factory attic after the closure had been announced in 1975.