When did Rolex change to blue Lume?
The luminosity or “lume” on a Rolex watch refers to the luminescent material that is applied to the hands and hour markers of the watches. This material glows in the dark and the purpose is of course to improve its legibility in low-lit conditions.
Not all Rolex watches have lume but the vast majority of them do. Over the years, Rolex has used a number of different materials in order to get the glowing effect and improved legibility. They first started out with radium. But eventually, humans realized just how dangerous the radioactivity of this material was. In particular for the factory workers who worked daily with this material.
As a matter of fact, radium was marketed as a magical “cure-all” intended for human ingestion. The result in the long-term was of course serious human health issues.
As a result, radium was banned and watchmakers had to find new luminous material. Rolex – and most other watch brands turned to tritium – a much less radioactive material that is much safer to use on watch dials. Rolex used tritium for its watches up until the late 1990s.
In 1998, Rolex started to use Luminova for its watch dials. This is the first time that Rolex used a non-radioactive compound for the luminosity of its watches. Luminova was manufactured by the company by Nemoto & Co., Ltd. The luminova watches were only in production between 1998 and 1998 and can be identified with the text “Swiss” on the bottom of the dial, known as “Swiss only” dials as they do not feature the full text “Swiss Made”.
In 2000, Rolex changed to Nemoto & Co’s improved Super-Luminova which was a strontium aluminate lume. This lume works in a different way than radioactive substances in the way that it stores photons when it is exposed to sunlight or artificial light, it can glow in the dark for multiple hours.
When did Rolex change to blue Lume?
As mentioned, Rolex has used a number of different materials and compounds for the luminosity over the years, All of which glow with a green light.
But in 2008, Rolex presented its new invention and a proprietary luminous compound which they call Chromalight. This is the first time that the lume of Rolex watches is blue. The answer is therefore that Rolex changed to blue lume in 2008.
Rolex blue lume Chromalight was first introduced on the Deepsea Sea-Dweller in 2008. Chromalight is not radioactive but instead. Like with so many other things, Rolex did not change from Super-Luminova to Chromalight across all models overnight. The first model to receive it was in 2008 and in the following years, Rolex would slowly but surely introduce it to all its models. Today, all Rolex watches use Chromalight for their luminous glow. This means that all modern Rolex watches now have blue lume.
