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| IWC Watch |
This manufacture from Schaffhausen does not have a reputation for packaging expensive air into its watches, and in fact most watches by IWC are filled to the gasket of the screwed-in case back with gear wheels, levers, plates, screws, and springs. This is true of almost every model, from the small ones to the large ones, and from the simple to the complicated - even to the very complicated. The great new model presented this year is the Portuguese Perpetual, a perpetual calendar based on one of IWC's own large automatic calibers. The design of the moon phase
represented in both the northern and the southern hemispheres was done with special care: Not only do the constellations look different in the night sky south of the Equator than they do in latitudes where we are at home, the phases of the waning and waxing moon also appear as a mirror image.
IWC Caliber 50611 displays this fact via an ingeniously simple (or is it simply ingenious?) mechanical solution. In a large, round window underneath 12 o'clock a dial-colored disk with two circular cut-aways located across from each other rotates in a clockwise manner above a
gold-plated disk. This disk, containing two black printed circles, is screwed to the movement. While the upper disk rotates slowly, in each of the two circular cut-aways an identical mirror image of the current appearance of the moon becomes visible. Small symbols on either side of the moon phase display point out that the moon of the northern hemisphere can be seen in the upper half of the display, and that of the southern half in the lower part of the display. The size of the watch movement (38.2 mm diameter) allowed for the use of an unusually large moon disk with a correspondingly large crown containing a large amount of teeth. The result is an especially precise display of the moon with a calculated deviation of one day in 577 years. Should this occur, the display - just like the rest of the calendar - can easily be corrected via the crown. This fact makes the engineers especially proud, and rightly so.
As the only brand not geographically located in the Jura region, IWC has a special place among Swiss watch companies. Three years ago the brand, along with Jaeger-LeCoultre and A. Lange & Sohne, was turned over to the prestigious Richemont group. Functioning as the technology center for Richemont's other brands; the engineers at IWC can expect many more large tasks in the future.
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IWC Watch
IWC North America
645 Fifth Avenue, 6th Floor
New York, NY 10022
Tel.: 1-800-432-9330
Fax: 212-872-1312
www.iwc.ch
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