How the Rolex Cyclops Became Famous (and Controversial)

The Rolex Cyclops lens, an invention now more than 70 years old, has become a mainstay of many of the Crown’s most popular timepieces, but does it still have a place in an era when enthusiasts are clamoring for thinner profiles and simpler, more balanced dial designs? Here we trace how the Rolex Cyclops came to be, which watches use it and why, and how it has made its presence felt throughout the rest of the watch industry. 

Before there was a date magnifier, there had to be a date window. And the first wristwatch to include that now-ubiquitous feature was the Rolex Datejust, unveiled in 1945. The Datejust was historic in several aspects, in fact. It was the first Rolex watch to combine the two milestone inventions of Rolex founder Hans Wilsdorf (below) — the waterproof Oyster case and the self-winding Perpetual movement — and thus the first of many to bear the now familiar phrase “Oyster Perpetual” on its dial. It was the first Rolex to be mounted on the trendsetting, five-link Jubilee bracelet, so named because it was unveiled on the “jubilee” occasion of the watchmaker’s 40th anniversary. 

Perhaps even more notably for watch-industry posterity, the Datejust (Ref. 4467) was the first watch to display the date numeral on the dial, by way of a 31-day date wheel that instantly switched over to the next date daily at midnight, with only the current date visible in a rectangular window at 3 o’clock. Previously, watches that displayed the date did so only with a separate hand that pointed to numerals on a peripheral numbered scale. Not only did the Datejust pioneer the now-common style of only showing the current date (though some watches still choose to use an analog “pointer date” for stylistic reasons), but it also established 3 o’clock as the optimum position for such a display; Wilsdorf reasoned that since most people wear their watch on their left hand, such a spot would allow the date to peek out from under a shirt cuff.

Practicality, and more specifically legibility,  was always a foremost concern for Hans Wilsdorf in his watch designs, and the Datejust’s history-making display was no exception. The first models in 1945 had the numerals of the date disk printed in red, which made them, in theory, more readable. But an even more radical idea came to him a few years later, which would make its market debut in 1953, a year that would prove to be a very bountiful one for Rolex.

According to watch industry legend, Hans Wilsdorf came up with the idea for a date-magnifying lens during his famously fastidious morning bathroom routine, when a droplet of water fell onto the crystal, directly over the date window, of his watch while he was washing his hands. This (perhaps apocryphal) “Eureka” moment, along with persistent laments from Wilsdorf’s second wife, Betty Wilsdorf-Mettler, about her difficulty reading the date on her own watch, have been widely circulated as the inspiration for the Cyclops — named after the one-eyed titan of Greek mythology and designed to magnify the date numeral in the aperture by a factor of 2.5. The bubble-shaped lens, applied directly to the top surface of the crystal, was intended to improve legibility at a glance and Rolex filed a patent for it (CH 298953) in 1952.

The Cyclops lens made its debut one year later, on the Datejust Ref. 6304/6305, and has been considered an essential element of that iconic model ever since. And it wasn’t long before the Cyclops became an identifying feature of almost every Rolex watch with a date display. The first GMT-Master in 1955, Ref. 6542, included one, as did the first Day-Date “President” (Ref. 6510/6511), which launched one year later. Today, newer models like the Sky-Dweller, Explorer II, and the recently launched Land-Dweller (below) all have the Cyclops lens over their date windows.

The first Datejust with a Cyclops was just one of Rolex’s contributions to watch history in 1953. The same year saw the debut of the Explorer, a tool watch that forever cemented its cult status when it took part in a  famous Mount Everest expedition, and the original Submariner, a now-iconic watch for divers that has become perhaps the brand’s signature piece. The first wristwatch to boast a 100-meter water resistance, it  has also spawned several variations of its own, including the even more-robust Sea-Dweller and the almost indestructible Deepsea. And it is here, within this dive-watch subfamily, that the use of the Cyclops lens gets a little more complicated. 

The earliest Submariners (starting with the immortal Ref. 6204) didn’t have a date indication, and hence, also had no Cyclops lens. This was the status quo until 1967, when Rolex introduced the original Sea-Dweller (above), essentially a Submariner with an upgraded waterproof rating (at the time, 500 meters to the Submariner’s 200 meters) and a built-in helium-release valve in the case — aimed at saturation divers in a pressurized atmosphere. What also set the Sea-Dweller apart from its predecessor was its 3 o’clock date window — which, unlike pretty much every other Rolex watch with this feature, was not magnified by a Cyclops lens. Adding one to the Sea-Dweller’s extra-thick domed crystal, a key contributor to its extreme depth rating, would have created distortion in reading the date, and this design remained consistent for 50 years.

Nevertheless, the date function, along with the Cyclops, finally migrated to the main Submariner model in 1969, completing that watch’s evolution from tool-watch utility to everyday luxury. (The Sub had already been on that path for several years, ever since it entered the pop cultural conversation as Sean Connery’s go-to timepiece in the early James Bond movies.) The Ref. 1680, aka the first Submariner Date, established the Cyclops date window as a hallmark element of the series, though Rolex continues to make the “non-date” Submariner models as well. 

For decades, the Sea-Dweller was the only Rolex “Professional” watch with a non-magnified 3 o’clock date window. But this changed In 2017, the model’s 50th anniversary year, when Rolex finally added a Cyclops lens to the thick crystal of the Sea-Dweller, which in its modern incarnation is water-resistant to a punishing 1,220 meters, or 4,000 feet. With the Sea-Dweller now part of the extended Cyclops family, that just leaves its even more extreme sibling, the Deepsea — whose water-resistance is a record-breaking 3,990 meters and which features a standard, non-magnified date aperture — as the only Cyclops holdout among Rolex dive watches. 

Over its 70-plus years, the Cyclops lens has indisputably become a Rolex hallmark — for many, a visual shorthand for identifying one of the Crown’s watches from across a room — but that doesn’t mean it is universally beloved. The aforementioned adoption of the Cyclops by the Sea-Dweller, half a century into its run, was met with heated debate from fans, for example. Detractors of the Cyclops point to the fact that it adds thickness to a watch’s overall profile because it’s applied to the top of the crystal rather than embedded into it. Others point out that at certain angles of viewing (as above), the presence of the Cyclops will obscure or blur the view of the date rather than enhance it, thus undermining its intended purpose. The crystal’s additional raised bubble, say others, is more prone to scratching and collecting dust around its edges. And there are some enthusiasts, especially nowadays, who simply don’t like a date display on a watch at all, feeling that it disrupts the harmonious symmetry of the dial, especially when emphasized by a magnifying glass. 

Like other Rolex inventions, the Cyclops lens has changed and evolved over the years. It was initially made from transparent Plexiglas and adhered to the surface of the crystal, which at the time was made from mineral glass. As Rolex, along with other watchmakers, upgraded its crystals to sapphire, the Cyclops lens followed suit, and in 2005, Rolex even started adding non-reflective coating to the magnifying lens to improve its overall readability. In the meantime, other watch brands have come up with very similar magnifying lens designs of their own over the years (especially since Rolex’s patent has long since expired). Rolex's sister brand Tudor, its historical competitor Omega, along with Tissot, Hamilton, Ball, and Seiko (as in the Alpinist model above) have all used such a magnifier in some of their watches. As long as there are watch owners with aging eyes, it’s likely that the Rolex Cyclops and its many descendants will remain in the mix of the watch industry's design toolbox.