A VINTAGE ROLEX STORY
1956 Rolex Tru-Beat ref. 6556 Cal. 1040 / Credit: Monaco Legend Auctions
I will tell you the curious and brief history of the Rolex Oyster Perpetual Tru-Beat of 1954. But before, for reminder, Rolex, a part of the fact that is still today the most famous and recognized fine watch brand all around the world, is largely responsible for ending the era of the pocket watch and launching the diffusion of the wristwatch in the beginning of the 20th century.
The founder, Hans Wilsdorf (1881-1960) was a young man born in Klumbach (German Empire) who went to learn watchmaking in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, and after founded a watch company in 1905 in London with Alfred Davis. Young businessman, his goal, apart from making money, was to develop and perfect the wristwatch. To convince people to let the pocket watch go and adopt this new way to wear ‘the time’. His revolutionary vision was clear: replace the pocket watch by the wristwatch. Improve quality, robustness, durability, precision and impermeability because the wristwatch was going to be worn under more hard conditions and exposure to the elements. Before registering his company Rolex in Geneva in 1919, he had also met Herman Aegler in 1905; a high quality ébauche based in Bienne, Switzerland to produce small movements for his watches. Rolex obtained then, for the first time, the precision test of a wristwatch, the Class A of the Kew Observatory in England, in 1914. In 1927, Hans Wilsdorf again had a revolutionary idea, to make almost all Rolex watches waterproof, with a new watch case endowed with a screwdown crown and caseback; the Oyster. And finally, in 1931, the achievement of his work, again with Aegler, he started the production of the Perpetual movement, self-winding with a central rotor height.
As such, even before WWII, Rolex was viewed as a unique watch brand with many innovations. During the War, Hans Wilsdorf, confident of his predominance in the fine watches market, and, having a global and humanist vision, produced and sent some Oyster chronographs to the prisoners of war; British Army RAF officers in the Stalags.
Rolex Tru-Beat ref. 6556 Black Dial Cal. 1040 / Credit: Bukowski’s
So, in 1945, Rolex, through his founder Hans Wilsdorf, started to specialize and professionalize the watches according to the activities of men. The Rolex Datejust was the first one destined for the active, urban man. In 1953 the Submariner for the professional working in marine environment, in 1955 the GMT-Master for the airline pilot, and so on.
Rolex, in the 1950s, was very busy as this was the Swiss Golden Age for watchmaking. They’ve been adding noble watchmaking complications, especially to models with the Oyster, as the complication, with its corrective pushers, should be dust and waterproof. The ref. 6062 Oyster Perpetual Star Moon, a complete calendar moonphase is one such significant example, with new Oyster pushers that kept dust and water out. We can imagine that Rolex, during this brilliant time, did not go so far as to produce high complications like the perpetual calendar or the minute repeater with many pushers and triggers, because it’s nearly impossible to put those mechanisms into an Oyster case and guaran-teeing a perfect waterproof seal.
Finally, in 1954, the Tru-Beat ref. 6556 (chronometer) and 6558 (non-chronometer certified) were introduced; in an Oyster case, and with an old and noble complication with does not need any adjustments: the dead second, the ‘seconde morte’. The Tru-Beat followed Rolex’s long tradition of making interesting and uniquely complicated watches. It was meant to be a doctor’s watch without the chronograph and pulsations scale! Instead, dead seconds were supposed to make quick calculations simpler for doctors.
This complication was well known during the time of pocket watches. Perhaps the first was in 1776, Jean Moïse Pouzet who separated a gear train from the escapement allowing a seconds hand to be stopped and started independently of the main mechanism. The trotteuse center second at 6, beats at the same frequency as the balance. The larger center seconds hands made one jump per second, and could be stopped. This mechanism with an additional gear train is like the ancestor of the chronograph. Also, Abraham-Louis Breguet, the famous watchmaker at the time was interested in this complication and named it ‘seconde d’un coup’, independent from the rest of the mechanism, and added it to the order of the hyper-complicated watch for the Queen of France, Marie Antoinette.
Rolex Cal. 1040 movement (dead seconds), rotor removed / Credit: Mark Sirianni
The Tru-Beat also has this particularity, a ticking center seconds hand, with a dead seconds mechanism, Caliber 1040 (Perpetual), a derivative of the 1030. The escapement features an anchor that swings back and forth, and as the anchor engages the gears, it moves the center seconds hand forward at a constant rate. The dead beat advances the center seconds hand only once per second; the opposite of the sweeping seconds hand. This hacking, jumping mode of the 6556 visually looks like a quartz watch but, remember, we are in 1954; this model was destined for the doctors, permitting a more accurate reading of a patient’s pulse rate.
In the 1040 we can see an additional height, two gears attached to the seconds pinion with a spring in between them, these gears are locked and unlocked by a small pallet fork that reduces the small sweeps to one big spring-loaded jump per second. This complication is beautiful, because one can view every second tick by, and strange because we are rather used to seeing sweep seconds in a mechanical watch.
The Tru-Beat unfortunately had a short life because the additional dead second device was complicated to replace in case of failure, knowing that the movement beats at 18,000 beats per hour and the dead second needs nearly 3,600 beats per hour; and works all the time. Effectively this meant that the Cal. 1040 had to be serviced frequently and was often adjusted to be like a normal 1030, without the ‘jumping second’. Overall, the above and also its short-lived life is why today the Tru-Beat is one of the rarest and the most curious Rolexes ever produced.
By: Joe Cook