Dimitri Rebikoff. (Nick Gould via Instagram)
New photographs of Dimitri Rebikoff, widely regarded as the “father of the Submariner,” have surfaced, adding rare, previously unseen images to the history of Rolex. Discovered by Nick Gould, a watch writer based in Australia, and published on his Instagram page on Saturday, the photographs come from an archive just digitized in 2025, he said. They show the pioneering diver on a beach in Cannes, France, demonstrating his torpedo-shaped underwater vehicle, the Pegasus.
Dimitri Rebikoff’s Rolex ref. 6200.
In the early 1950s, as Rolex developed its first dive watch, the brand had access to one of the world’s most experienced scuba divers, who was also a prolific engineer. From early sketches to more than 100 test dives in southern France, Rebikoff was involved at every stage of the Submariner’s development. Internally, before it was named the Submariner, the watch was referred to at Rolex as la pièce Rebikoff, a sign of how influential the diver was to its development.
The images are among the clearest known photographs of Rebikoff wearing an early Submariner, the Rolex reference 6200, with its oversized crown. Gould said he "was absolutely over the moon" when he came across them.
Dimitri Rebikoff. (Nick Gould via Instagram)