Hopefully this should answer all James Bond related questions - end of :D
http://www.jamesbondwatches.com/
Andy
How very uncool!! I wish I hadn't seen that :(Originally Posted by BigD
Hopefully this should answer all James Bond related questions - end of :D
http://www.jamesbondwatches.com/
Andy
Whoever does not know how to hit the nail on the head should be asked not to hit it at all.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Couple of small points: Casio Royale? Freudian slip here, methinks and I think that Moneypenny was M's secretary and not Q's. As for the watches, Bond wore Rolex and Omega. I find it a pity that the most aspirational items are those associated with the most famous contract killer of all!
Good info on what Bond wore in films although personally I could not care less.Originally Posted by Andyg
I don't think Dell Deaton has proved his point at all about what watch the fictional character Bond wore, and he does not answer questions that challenge his views
http://www.rolexforums.com/showthread.php?t=125082
I'm very much aware of Mr Deaton's article. However, if you compare the date of publishing and the date of the original post on this thread you may notice that this post is dated Nov 2008 and Mr Deaton's seminal article was published four months later in Feb 2009.
Mr Deaton and I may have discussed this matter once or twice:
http://forums.watchuseek.com/f20/what-w ... 22506.html
It's a trainwreck which doesn't really reflect well on either of us!
I've read the WUS thread :wink: . I have a 1016 Explorer which the serial number dates to 1958/59.
Eddie
Whole chunks of my life come under the heading "it seemed like a good idea at the time".
I guess that this is in response to this (or variations of it):I have a 1016 Explorer which the serial number dates to 1958/59.
Several people have pointed this out and I'm clearly wrong here. The date was useful as it seemed to support the, clearly 34mm, watch in the Villiers painting. The 1963 Basel launch date seemed solid and was confirmed by a few people who I consider to be Rollie experts - which I certainly am not. However, in the last year it has become clear that many think the 1016 model is older than I thought.It has become clear that you believe the only Explorer that Fleming ever wore wore to be a 1016. How do you explain how the 1016, launched in April 1963 came to be on the wrist of Fleming in 1962?
It doesn't make much difference to my basic assertion that the watch was an Explorer, but it does weaken the evidence for the 34mm explorer over the 36mm Explorer. If it had been the case then the 34mm Explorer would definitely be the original Bond watch. However, the size of the watch in the Villiers picture and the textual evidence of continuity (of the watch Fleming was imagining) through Leiter are still good evidence for the 34mm hypothesis.
That it was and is no secret that Fleming had a 36mm Explorer is undeniable, that no one before Mr Deaton and I made the connection is very, very unlikely. That he had a 34mm Explorer prior to the 1016 is very much an open question. However, the Villiers painting and the mention of a Rolex 'with big phosphorus numerals' in 1954 (which really couldn't have been a 1016) suggests to me that Fleming did have one or that he imagined Bond with a Rolex before he had one himself! I don't mind either way. My feeling is that Fleming had a 34mm Rolex (now lost) followed by a 1016. Based on the text, I would say that Fleming imagined Bond having a 34mm until Bond smashed it in OHMSS and a 1016 thereafter. The conceit of changing Bond's watch to reflect his own change of watch is precisely the sort of thing one would expect of Fleming.
As for Mr Deaton I wouldn't mind so much if he wasn't such a blaggart:
http://theprodigalguide.com/2010/08/02/ ... ence-1016/There was a period of time after which I’d become the first person ever to make the ultimate connection between Rolex and James Bond here, and the point when the watch would actually be first seen by the masses on public display.
But this thread, and the ones on WUS, show that he is, at best, confused.
The ironic thing is that, if he hadn't annoyed me so much in the very first thread I would never have bothered to firm up the hypothesis four months before he published. At the time I wasn't that interested in Rolex and really preferred Biggles.
I'm wrong Matt, I was a decade out. It's actually 1968/69.
Eddie
Whole chunks of my life come under the heading "it seemed like a good idea at the time".
In that case, As I have been given a wide range of conflicting evidence on the launch date, I would really like to know the definitive answer to the question of when the 1016 was launched. Someone must know this and be able to prove it one way or another? If it was launched after the Villiers painting was painted then there were definitely two; if not, the question remains open.Originally Posted by swanbourne
Cheers Eddie!
i will be taking more notice next time i see a bond film (usally looking at the bond girls)
very intresting is there any more films with intresting watches :?:
Have fun.http://www.watch-id.com/Originally Posted by DEL BOY
Dr. No - Yema
The Yema watch company, or “YEMA Maison Horlogère Française” was founded in Besancon, France, in 1948. An early major achievement was the 1953 offering of wristwatches made water resistant to depths greater than 200 meters. Yema also produced James Bond’s first movie watch: Dr. No, 1962. Their willing? Think, create, assemble and make high quality models. Avant-gardist since its origins, Yema Maison Horlogère 1948 (Yema French watchmaking company 1948) bases its reputation by offering reliable, audacious and high quality watches, illustrating the brand philosophy: giving the best! The creation of the shock-proof watch is the first innovation out of so many as the bezel locker.
Or maybe not because they took out the part about then being the first James Bond watch on their website :mrgreen:
Or http://watchesinmovies.info/tag/casio/Originally Posted by patrick
Great post..............some very interesting theories. Amazed that nobody else has posted this link;
http://rolexblog.blogspot.com/2008/10/d ... nnery.html
lots of other intersting stuff for those bothered 8)
Great thread and great research. Thanks for sharing
Originally Posted by rfrazier
Cant say I've ever read the books but I thought Fleming DID mention Rolex in the books but did not elaborate which model???
again.... he was a fictional character. :wink:Originally Posted by kultschar
You are right Fleming does discribe Bond taking off his Rolex and using as a knuckle duster - charming, but does not say which model. Perhaps he thought it was enough to say Rolex rather than Rolex Blah, Model number Blah. A bit like people talking about Rolls Royce - without having to say which model number.Originally Posted by seadog1408
As for the watches - well you can form your own opinion.
Ian Fleming wore a Explorer 1 :D Was on display in the Imperial War.
Sean Connery (as 007) wore a Rolex Sub
Roger Moore (as 007) wore a Rolex Sub (along with some other crappy watches)
Timothy Dulton (as 007) wore a Rolex Sub
David Niven (as 007) wore a Rolex GMT Master.
George Lazenby (as 007) wore a Rolex pre-Datona.
Only the last two Bond wore Omega, however its well know that Daniel Craig wears a Rolex in "real life". As for the other one - he was Irish - nuff said :wink:
Pretty safe to say that Bond wore a Rolex in the same way its pretty safe to say Harry Potter had a wand :D
Andy
Andy
Whoever does not know how to hit the nail on the head should be asked not to hit it at all.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Who's Roly?Originally Posted by adhir
Incidentally, if you're aiming for the Holy Grail that is Sales Corner to sell, you've got to hit 250 posts now. Even at the rate that you're posting monosyllabic nonsense that's going to take a long time.
Give it up.
Now.
Although no trees were harmed during the creation of this post, a large number of electrons were greatly inconvenienced.
He also wore a Submariner. I seem to recall it being visible when he's cracking the safe containing the information on Blofeld.Originally Posted by Andyg
I don't think that the watches that Bond wore in the films are disputed at all (although everyone seems to forget all the Seiko... However, this thread was about the precise watch that Ian Fleming imagined onto the wrist of Bond in the books. No one was disputing that it was a Rolex, merely which Rolex. My contention was that there is enough implicit and circumstantial evidence to make an interestingly precise hypothesis.
An equally relevant question is "What watch did Biggles wear?".
Eddie
Whole chunks of my life come under the heading "it seemed like a good idea at the time".
I looked in my copy of "Biggles Flies Undone" & there's no mention of a watch. He does however have some difficultyOriginally Posted by swanbourne
with a "bumaree" who has hidden a sausage on his person. There's also a reference to "nothing on the clock but the maker's name",
although I believe that refers to an instrument in his cockpit.
______
Jim.
You are kidding, right? :shock:Originally Posted by seadog1408
That's too easy, when Biggles rejoined the RAF and was subsequently given command of 666 squadron immediately prior to the Battle of Britain he was issued with a navigators wristwatch. The standard navigator's wristwatch was the 6b/159. As Omega provided an astonishing 110,000 of these with their model CK2292 powered by a chronometer grade 30SCT2, it is more than likely that he wore an Omega like this:An equally relevant question is "What watch did Biggles wear?".
Eddie
Even if some claim that he in fact wore an Air King in his later career...
I thought he looked best in the rolex
+1Originally Posted by scubasky100
Jakes blog on Rolexmagazine.com has a great feature about Rolex and Mr Bond.....it is a great read.
John
Thanks Matt - very interesting :)
Loved this post. Kind of puts my ideas of getting a Ltd Edition Bond Omega watch to the fire.
Nice post. Thanks for the info.
I like how in the last movie, Daniel Craig emphasised that he was wearing an Omega and not a Rolex.
I think Bond needs to revisit his Submariner past..
:bom:
And when he had a rolex they payed for it ?
+ 2 well done
thanks thats an interesting website to read while im at "work"Originally Posted by skmark
In the books, it says "luminous numerals". That's only the explorer 1016.
Thanks Matt!
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz again zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
This post is epic, what a read
Cheers!
If you want more, you might enjoy post 24 here.
http://forums.watchuseek.com/f20/cor...ap-753434.html
Post 36 links to some more frivolous stuff that amuses me too...
There's a fairly cool postscript to that row:
Courtesy of Eddie, the 'Real Bond' strap now exists and is for sale on the Timefactors website. It looks great!
Cheers for that, very good thread on wus, actually I am a bond fan but knew little of the watches so it's nice to learn something new
(I came to this thread as M4tt mentioned it in another thread)
The trouble with using OHMSS for reference material RE Bond is that Fleming was influenced at this point by the Film
Fleming takes the trouble to strengthen and establish links between novel Bond and film Bond in OHMSS
(Scottish ancestry, Ursula Andress dining at Blofeld's lair)
There are also many false quotes from the novels RE Rolex, Rolex is very sparsely mentioned in the books
Here's what I could find, titles are abbreviated, apologies if I missed any (I used find function in Calibre)
CR
No mention
LALD
He looked at the Rolex watch on his wrist. It was three minutes pasteleven o’clock
MR
No Mention
DAF
No mention
FRWL
No mention
DN
No mention
GF
No mention
FYEO
No Mention
TB
No mention of Bond's rolex, only the Petacchi character
TSWLM
No mention
OHMSS
and his wrist-watch, a heavy Rolex Oyster Perpetual on an expanding metal bracelet
He sat down and bent to his paper-work and tried not to listen to the hastening tick of the Rolex on his wrist,
through the fingers of the left hand and the Rolex transferred to his right, the bracelet clasped in the palm of his hand and round the fingers so that the face of the watch lay across his middle knuckles
Bond's right flashed out and the face of the Rolex disintegrated against the man's jaw
Bond lifted his left wrist. Remembered that he no longer had a watch. That he would certainly be allowed on expenses. He would get another one as soon as the shops opened after Boxing Day. Another Rolex? Probably. They were on the heavy side, but they worked. And at least you could see the time in the dark with those big phosphorus numerals.
He glanced at the new Rolex on his wrist - the shops were still shut and he had had to blarney it out of Q Branch **
YOLT
No mention
TMWTGG
No mention
O&TLD
No mention (I didn't check 007 in NY)
**Implies Bond had access to Rolex via Q branch.
But with the exception of the single line in LALD, Fleming does not mention Bond and Rolex until after Dr. No (movie) is released......
Lets not forget....
Bond is a fictional character
Fleming also wrote that you could die being covered in paint, that bond had a fight with a giant squid & that homosexual men can't whistle, so lets not get too carried away about the importance of this [says the man who just trawled through his entire e-library of Bond books]
Sorry, are you implying that some of the quotes I used are false? Perhaps you can specify the quotes, because guess what:
I do primary research by hand unless I have no other alternative. Inthis case, I read all the books and used a pencil to mark references. You have missed a few, as there are plenty of lines that identify the same watch without explicitly calling it a Rolex; for example:
Obviously they are a bit harder to dig out, but they are there to find.'You're still wearing that old wristwatch of yours with the big phosphorous numerals....Put your watch right up against the counter. See! The sweephand is getting all excited. Move your hand away and it loses interest. It's those phosphorous numerals of yours. Remember the other day one of the watch companies withdrew an air-pilot's watch from the market because the Atomic Energy people got fussy? Same thing. They thought this particular pilot's watch, with the big phosphorous numerals, was giving off too much radiation to be good for the wearer.'
Try this, it's a little more detailed:
http://forums.watchuseek.com/f45/wha...ux-298155.html
I think that my account is premised upon the fact that Bond is fictional.
like I clearly stated I used a search function on every single bond novel/short story (bar 007 in new York)
my search was "Rolex"
I wasn't interested in searching 'watch' or 'wrist watch' because this doesn't explicitly imply a Rolex wrist watch.
I'm a bond novel fan, I'm 100% supportive of anyone's quest to link fictional Bond to a particular watch
A computer driven search function of electronic text is a reasonably robust method to find text.
The 60 page WUS thread doesn't interest me (sorry)
If you or anyone can make a positive ID of Bond's Rolex from what amounts to a few lines from OHMSS then power to you, but like I said, OHMSS is "tainted" by the Dr. No movie, so.....
As you've read the books, (which despite you owning in hard copy you realise they are the same as the ebook version right?) you'll know as well as me that Fleming was perfectly capable of explaining things in detail if he so desired... if I asked what tobacco was in Bond's cigarettes or how do I make a Vespa then easy answers right? So perhaps the question isn't what Rolex did Fleming have Bond wear, but why was Fleming seemingly disinterested in stating exactly what model, as he easily could have done.
He did state precisely the watch Bond wore. People just forget that such a watch existed. He then changed the watch. It's all in the thread that you don't want to read. I'm aware the ebook is identical, but your search method wasn't terribly thorough, as the quote I posted demonstrated That clearly referred to two discrete Rolex models. Again, you'll need to read the first post of the thread to find out how.
Last edited by M4tt; 10th November 2013 at 01:15.