Beyond Antimagnetic

A sporty timepiece with a touch of whimsy that plays well even with a suit, the Rolex Oyster Perpetual Milgauss is the tool watch you didn’t know you needed

- Joshua Yap

One of the key factors determining a company’s success is its ability to provide solutions that address its customer’s needs. And if it proffers wares that work as good as they look, prosperity is practically assured. Case in point: Rolex, with its line-up of oh-so-sexy yet robust tickers that meet the timekeeping needs of professionals ¬– from the Submariner (deep-sea divers) and GMT-Master (airline pilots) to the Cosmograph Daytona (race car drivers) and Explorer (speleologists). The Milgauss also sits within this roll call of tool watches, but it has been overshadowed by its more illustrious brethren for too long and, we reckon, unjustly so.

Before we get too far ahead of ourselves, let’s look at the Milgauss’ raison d’être. In the mid20th century – when the world took a giant leap in innovation, technology and space travel – scientists, engineers and technicians found themselves exposed to electromagnetic fields which were detrimental to the precision of their mechanical watches. Generally, a magnetic field of 50 to 100 gauss is enough to wreak havoc on a watch’s balance spring and escape wheel. For context, a fridge magnet has a magnetic field of 200 gauss over a 5mm radius.