Originally Posted by
Stringer
You’re absolutely correct on everything you refer to, and there are of course examples of other Rolex innovations where similar statements can be made, but it somewhat ignores the point that an idea remains only that, just a notion, no matter how laudable. Until it is made tangible, in a real-world, reproduceable, practical, kinks-worked-out, mass scale it’s a nothing of nothing in consequence, and getting to that stage is no small feat either. Patents which never really went much beyond the page are legion. I absolutely applaud those of invention & genius who drive progress, but I think credit should also be given to those who take an idea, improve upon it and make it real & workable, which is arguably what Rolex have done well.
If you try hard enough you can pretty much strip any idea ever back to someone else, in a ‘standing on the shoulders of giants’ fashion. Leonardo Da Vinci may have sketched an aerial screw, but I’m not crediting him with inventing the helicopter.
“In science, the credit goes to the man who convinces the World, not the man to whom the idea first occurs” - Sir Francis Darwin