The Rolex Turn-O-Graph, Ref. 116264
The Rolex Turn-O-Graph is one of those Rolex models which exists slightly in the shadow of the more mainstream and widely known sports models. I think part of the reason might be that it shares the functionality of the turning timing bezel with other, more specifically task-focused watches, including the various diver’s watches and the GMT Master — but it was not, in fact, developed for any special purpose or environment. Instead, it was meant to provide much of the functionality of a chronograph without the added expense and added fragility. I have always felt that the Turn-O-Graph ought to get more love from enthusiasts than it does, but of course, it is not a watch that comes with the romance you get with a watch made specifically for pilots or aquanauts. Instead, it is a watch meant to be something versatile and wearable every day, giving you an elapsed-time feature in the most unobtrusive way possible.
The Turn-O-Graph was introduced by Rolex in 1953 as the reference 6202, making it the earliest production Rolex watch to feature a rotating bezel of any kind. There’s one Rolex watch with a turning bezel which preceded the Turn-O-Graph: the rather enigmatic Zerographe chronograph, produced in very small numbers and in, as far as anyone can tell, two references, 3890 and 3346 — it’s the latter, from 1937, that had a rotating bezel. (GQ has a great canned history of the Zerographe, if you’re interested in digging into the subject in more detail).
The Zerographe was a somewhat crude approximation of a chronograph — the turning bezel was for recording elapsed minutes, and the seconds hand actually ran continuously. If you wanted to time something, you pressed the seconds hand reset button at 2:00, which put the seconds hand back to zero.
The Zerographe may have been the first shot Rolex took at doing a watch with a turning bezel, but as far as I can remember, the first wristwatch with a turning bezel was designed by a gent named Phillip Van Horn Weems, a naval officer who collaborated with Charles Lindbergh in developing a navigation watch — the Longines-Lindbergh Hour Angle — designed to be used with the system of air navigation Weems had developed. A turning bezel seems like too good an idea to have taken until 1930-1931 to materialize, but I have been unable to find any earlier examples of a turning bezel in either a wristwatch or a pocket watch.
Given the chronograph preceded the invention of the timing bezel by a number of decades, it seems strange that no one thought of it until the 1930s, but stranger things have happened. In any case, Weems went on to be granted a patent for a rotating timing bezel in 1935, and the Longines A-11 (in the UK, 6B/159) were used during World War II and had elapsed minute bezels, as well as a second crown for locking the bezel. After the war, Glycine introduced a turning bezel on the 24-hour Airman, marked off in 24-hour increments to allow quick read-off of time in a second time zone.
The Turn-O-Graph was, therefore, in 1953, one of a small but growing number of watches that took advantage of the simplicity and robustness of using an elapsed-time bezel rather than a full-blown chronograph. The next decade would see an explosion in the production of watches with elapsed-time bezels — generally dive watches — but the Turn-O-Graph was the progenitor of this feature at Rolex.
The 6202 is virtually indistinguishable from a first generation Submariner, although the quickest tip-off is that it says “Turn-O-Graph” right on the dial. The 6202 and the 6204 (the first Submariner) both had straight hands, no date, and black dials, but the 6202 was not produced for very long. In 1954, it was replaced by the 6309, which introduced the Turn-O-Graph in a form to which, with variations, the watch adhered to all the way up until it was discontinued completely in 2011.
The Turn-O-Graph was essentially a Datejust with a turning bezel. While it probably seems, to most modern enthusiasts, to be essentially a watch to wear to an office instead of a cockpit, it was used in just about as demanding an aviation environment as you can imagine. The Turn-O-Graph was adopted by the Air Force Thunderbirds demonstration team, and a number of the watches the team used actually had a Thunderbird logo on the dial, which is a little bit more elevated than a Domino’s Pizza logo if you ask me (nothing against pizza).
The Thunderbird is a Native American mythological creature, which is said to cause thunder by flapping its wings and lightning by flashing its eyes. In 1953, the Thunderbirds Air Force team was founded — the same year that the Thunderbird watch debuted and Rolex, with its ever-keen eye for marketing tie-ins, supplied the team with watches and leveraged the relationship in their advertisements. For that reason, the Turn-O-Graph is sometimes called the Thunderbird.
Strictly speaking the name ought to mean just the references supplied to the team, I suppose, but it’s not uncommon for Turn-O-Graph watches in general to be called Thunderbird watches. In fact, Rolex used the name “Thunderbird” for the Turn-O-Graph in its advertisements, sometimes along with references to the watch having a “Turn-O-Graph” bezel.
The Thunderbird team currently flies the F-16 Fighting Falcon (although the nickname for the plane, “Viper” is much more common) but back in 1953-54 they were flying the Republic F-84 Thunderjet, so we had guys flying Thunderjets as a team called the Thunderbirds whilst wearing
Thunderbird watches.
This was, as far as I can tell, the first and the last time that the Turn-O-Graph/Thunderbird was associated with anything even remotely redolent of adrenaline, testosterone, and a light-the-fires-and-kick-the-tires mindset, but it’s still an interesting footnote to the history of the line. Maybe the Turn-O-Graph suffers a little from the same also-ran vibe you can get from the Explorer II, AKA Not-A-GMT-Master-And-By-The-Way-Spelunking-Is-An-Awfully-Niche-Sport.
But I like the Turn-O-Graph. It’s a really nice combination of elegance, versatility, and practicality and they remain a wonderful example of Rolex at its unobtrusive best. A lot of modern sports watches have some degree of over-the-top performative ostentation as their stock-in-trade; not the Turn-O-Graph. More than a lot of more recent modern watches, it’s a timepiece for someone who chooses a watch to please their own tastes, not someone else’s, and who has the confidence to do things for their own reasons.