DARING SPIRIT

Tudor celebrates the spirit of adventure with the 21st-century expedition timepiece Ranger as well as pushing the limits of the Black Bay

- KC YAP

RANGER

IN THE SPIRIT OF THE BRITISH NORTH GREENLAND EXPEDITION

On the historic day of 8 July 1952, the British North Greenland Expedition left Deptford, an area on the banks of the Thames in London, for a two-year scientific mission studying ice sheets in Greenland. Equipped with the brand-new Oyster Prince model, Tudor's first automatic and waterproof watch, the members of the expedition, mainly British scientists and sailors, conducted in depth glaciological and seismic surveys at several sites.

When Tudor requested the crew to gather performance data from the 30 Oyster Prince watches that would be worn under extreme conditions, one of them returned with a letter to Tudor stating that his watch "maintained remarkable precision" and that "at no time did it need to be rewound by hand." This notion of robustness has since remained at the heart of the Tudor philosophy as evidenced by its focus on technical performance.

Although the Tudor watches used by the expedition from 1952 to 1954 never bore the inscription of "Ranger" on their dials, subsequent Ranger models have perpetuated the concept of the expedition watch, a robust, practical, and affordable instrument, born at Tudor during this time. The origins of the Tudor Ranger family, in fact, date back to 1929, the year that Hans Wilsdorf registered the "Ranger" name, three years after registering the "Tudor" trademark.