Marmorino Roma

The Rolex Milgauss (originally) designed for scientists and engineers (current reference 2020/2021: 116400 or 116400GV) is not necessarily a typical Rolex replica watches. This can be seen in two features alone, which are quite unusual in view of the actually arch-conservative designs from the Geneva manufactory: A lightning-like, bright orange second hand and a green (!) sapphire glass (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: the Milgauss was used when it was first introduced in 1956, among other places at CERN, a large facility for nuclear research near Geneva, where equipment that emits electromagnetic waves was, as now, part of the everyday work of scientists.

In this article, we first take a detailed look at the historical origins of the Rolex Milgauss, and then take a closer look at the particularly popular Z-Blue (116400GV) color variant in a hands-on manner...

Rolex Milgauss: the CERN testing

The negative influence of magnetism on the accuracy of mechanical watches has always been a topic that has occupied watchmakers around the world. In 1891, for example, there was a serious railroad accident in Ohio, with many fatalities, which was caused by the dispatcher in charge losing his pocket watch. The US railway authority then commissioned the development of a chronometer with a non-magnetic case.

The Rolex Milgauss reference 6541, designed in 1956 for scientific and engineering applications, started with the disruptive factor of magnetism: the model was one of the first mechanical watches ever to be specially designed to display the time with high precision even when exposed to strong magnetic fields.

Okay, actually, the very first Milgauss was not the Milgauss reference 6541, but the reference 6543 (although it sounds illogical). The Milgauss 6543 was already produced in 1954, but had the character of a prototype and was therefore only produced in very small quantities. That's why Milgauss models with the reference 6543 fetch pretty blatant prices today - at Christie's auction house such a model went under the hammer in 2012 for a whopping CHF 171,000. By the way: The very first IWC Ingenieur (Ref. 666A and 666AD) came onto the market in 1954 and – as the name suggests – had a similar target group to the fake rolex Milgauss.

Visually, the Milgauss was very close to the Rolex GMT Master and the Rolex Submariner, which had been launched three years earlier (see for example the 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 subtle honeycomb pattern on the dial.