The Rolex Sea-Dweller was born in an era when the next great stage of exploration – of extreme environments never before visited – was just beginning. It was just a decade before that Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay scaled Everest for the first time; several short years later, in 1960, the bathyscaphe Trieste descended to the deepest point in the ocean successfully. It was also during this time that the first permanent research stations were established in Antarctica, and that Nautilus, the first nuclear submarine, traveled under the Polar ice cap to the North Pole.
These years of prosperity led to some of mankind’s greatest explorations, and it was these feats by the greatest generation that captured the minds and hearts of the baby boomers. There was simply nothing more exciting than exploration in the late 1950s and early 1960s, whether of outer space or the deepest oceans, and this is why it makes perfect sense that during this period, the Rolex replica watch developed the Sea-Dweller. This was an era of scientific discovery, and the world was captivated by these feats of perseverance and determination to the point where the dive into the Marianas Trench landed Bob Walsh and Jacques Piccard on the cover of Life Magazine, arguably the magazine of record for most Americans at the time.
It should be noted that the fake Rolex Sea-Dweller watch did come after the Deep-Sea Special, the watch clamped to the outside of the Trieste when it descended to the bottom of the Challenger Deep. But that watch was huge – completely unwearable. Of course, it wasn’t even really designed to be worn in the first place. The same can be said for another experimental watch made by the fake Rolex in 2012, the Deepsea Challenge, a monster 51mm mega-dive fake watch that James Cameron strapped to the outside of his vessel when he recreated the historic 1960 dive. The Rolex Sea-Dweller wasn’t devised as a one-time use tool, or a prototype from which other technology could be taken – it was made for the most serious divers in the world and meant to be worn daily, over a long period of time.