Originally posted by NicoH
Another thing to mess things up a bit:

The current hairspring in the Deepsea, Day-Date II, new Submariner is only called "Parachrome" and not "Parachrome bleu" anymore. I asked James D. about it who asked Rolex at Baselworld and they told him it was the same thing but it wasn´t called "bleu" anymore.

Maybe they have the same material in two different batches, one is blue and the other one isn´t? Would it be possible that Rolex made it blue (like blued screws or hands) in order to be able to have something "new" - not just an antimagnetic hairspring but a blue hairspring?

Looking forward to your clarifications John!
Nico
Well, the story James originally got is essentially the same information that I got in the call back.

The company line is that the 4130 has always had the Parachrom hairspring - it just hasn't always been blue. Apparently the oxide coating gives it the blue color. Without ripping the the hairspring out of pre-blue Daytona, and submitting it for spectral analysis to identify the elemental composition of the metal, I really don't know how to solve this mystery except to take Rolex at their word - which doesn't make sense to me on many levels.

I was told that Rolex decided that, since blued metal was a special decoration in watch movements (it was pointed out that others have done a blue hairspring before) they decided to make the hairspring blue with an oxide coating because the hairspring was so revolutionary and special. Looking at what we know, it looks as though the non-blue parachrom hairspring was in production for a good 4 years or more before someone said "hey, I think we should make the hairspring blue!"