The Rado Captain Cook
Rado Captain Cook on a brown leather strap / Credit: aBlogtoWatch
Rado is a Swiss watchmaker founded in 1917 as Schlup & Co., by three brothers: Fritz, Ernst and Werner in Lengnau, Switzerland. The Rado watch in question is the Captain Cook, a watch that very much helped propel Rado to prominence and is still in production by the company today. The Captain Cook stood out for many reasons at the time when it was released, and was recognized as fairly innovative for the time. Today homages of the original are still very important for Rado’s bottom line.
The Rado Captain Cook was released in 1962 and marketed as the world’s first scratch proof watch, called the DiaStar 1. The watch is named after Captain James Cook, the famous British sea captain and explorer active in the 18th century - famous for charting Australia, New Zealand, and much of the South Pacific. It featured hardmetal and sapphire crystal, which were very rare in the watch industry at the time and part of the reason the timepiece was known as the world’s first scratch proof watch. The original Captain Cook watch had a water resistance of 220 meters, and was made to be an especially rugged dive watch. It was made in low quantities until the late 1960s, and is filled with unique little features that helped it stand out from the crowd at the time. Two of my favourites of those features are the inward sloping bezel and the swinging anchor logo, both of which are reminiscent of the watches’ connection to the sea.
Many modern reissues of the Rado Captain Cook are ironically less water resistant than the original 220 meters and use the ETA C07 movements with an 80-hour power reserve. They’re understandably popular, as vintage Rado Captain Cooks are pretty hard to come by – and probably quite delicate.
By: Andres Ibarguen