The Replica Rolex Milgauss (current reference 2020/2021: 116400 or 116400GV), which was (originally) designed for scientists and engineers, is not necessarily a typical Rolex. This can be seen in two features alone, which are quite unusual considering the extremely conservative designs from the Geneva manufacturer: a lightning-like, bright orange second hand and a green (!) sapphire crystal (Glace Verte).
The special shape of the second hand points to the most characteristic technical feature of the Rolex Milgauss Oyster Perpetual: resistance to magnetism (up to 1,000 Gauss). No coincidence: When it was first introduced in 1956, the Milgauss was used, among other places, at CERN, a large nuclear research facility near Geneva, where equipment that emits electromagnetic waves is part of the scientists’ everyday work, as then as now.
In this article we first take a closer look at the historical origins of the Rolex Milgauss and then take a closer look at the particularly popular color variant Z-Blue (116400GV) in more detail…
Rolex Milgauss: the CERN testing
The negative influence of magnetism on the accuracy of mechanical watches has always been a topic that concerns the world’s watchmakers. In 1891, for example, there was a serious train accident in Ohio with many deaths, which was caused by the dispatcher in charge having a slow pocket watch. The US Railway Authority then commissioned the development of a chronometer with a non-magnetic case.
The Rolex Milgauss, which was designed in 1956 for scientific and engineering applications, addressed the disruptive factor of magnetism with the reference 6541: The model was one of the first mechanical watches ever to be specifically designed to display the time with high precision even under strong magnetic field influence.
Okay, actually the Milgauss reference 6541 wasn’t the very first Milgauss, but the reference 6543 (even if it sounds illogical). The Milgauss 6543 was already produced in 1954, but had prototype character and was therefore only produced in very small quantities. That’s why Milgauss models with the reference 6543 fetch pretty steep prices today – such a model went under the hammer at Christie’s auction house in 2012 for a whopping 171,000 CHF. By the way: The very first IWC Ingenieur (Ref. 666A and 666AD) also came onto the market in 1954 and – as the name suggests – had a similar target group as the Rolex Milgauss.
Visually, the Milgauss was very close to the Rolex GMT Master and the Rolex Submariner, which had come onto the market three years earlier (see for example steel Oyster case, bidirectional rotating bezel, round indices, Twinlock crown, etc.) . Some of the few differences are the wedge-shaped indices at 3-6-9 o’clock, the set of hands and a fine, honeycomb-like pattern on the dial.
The magnetic field shielding was made possible by a simple technical principle for which Rolex applied for a patent in 1954: The mechanics of the watch were protected, similar to a Faraday cage, by an internal soft iron cage, which means that the Rolex Milgauss magnetism of up to 1,000 Gauss (0.1 Tesla) could put away. For Francophile watch fans, it probably clicks because the name of the Rolex Milgauss is derived from the French “Mille” (thousand) and the unit for measuring magnetism (Gauss).
The Rolex Milgauss was tested under real conditions at CERN, the European research center for particle physics near Geneva. Since my knowledge of physics is limited to distant school lessons and 12 seasons of Big Bang Theory, it is honestly hard for me to imagine what everyday life is like for the bright minds at CERN – the research center is particularly known for the Large Hadron, which went into operation in 2008 Collider (LHC), which was planned by over 10,000 scientists over decades and drives particles almost up to the speed of light on an approximately 27 kilometer (!) long underground circular path and causes them to collide in order to examine the decay products.
In 2012, CERN scientists spectacularly detected the Higgs boson (also called the God particle), whose existence gives mass to all known matter. But what was covered even more intensively in the press was the fact that the experiments carried out since 2015 have created small black holes that can be detected with the help of the LHC. Fans of science fiction films probably associate black holes with catastrophic effects on humanity – but as of today, the city of Geneva has not yet been swallowed by a black hole (and therefore Rolex has not been swallowed up either) 😉 .
It doesn’t take much imagination to imagine that the scientists and engineers at CERN work with all sorts of equipment that emits a lot of electromagnetic waves – and these, in turn, can have a strong negative impact on the accuracy of watches. The influence of magnetism on watches may not be all that important today, but it was highly relevant in the 1950s and the years that followed…