IWC launches six legends for the middle east
The Schaffhausen manufacturer is celebrating its anniversary with six legendary wristwatches from its past: the Portuguese, Ingenieur, Pilot’s Watch, Da Vinci, Aquatimer, Portofino – the watchmaking legends have been brought out again as attractive vintage models. For the celebration – and naturally also the great joy of all lovers and collectors of the brand.
It all started more than 140 years ago in Boston where the talented and enterprising watchmaker Florentine Ariosto Jones was looking for an opportunity to set up on his own and do things much differently and better than his colleagues in the flourishing American watch industry. The director of F. Howard Watch & Cie at that time, he had of course heard of the little country of Switzerland and its outstanding watchmakers. And he was fired up by the information that workers in the Swiss watch industry produced their watches for amazingly low wages and in the main with old machines. Wages in Switzerland were then still really low, something that may seem surprising today. And so a compelling business idea came to F. A. Jones: Why not manufacture quality watches in Switzerland under more favourable conditions, but with new and better machines, for the North American market?
His idea was conceived, planned and carried out: in New York Jones set up a sales organization with two business partners where pocket watch movements manufactured in Switzerland were to be put in cases and then sold throughout North America. The company was given a grand sounding name: International Watch Company. And Jones set off by boat to Europe with his watchmaker friend Louis Kidder. Along with a whole host of ideas, the two men also took with them machines for the mass production of parts and finished design drawings for the first Swiss manufactured watches.
Initial surprise: in the watchmaking centres of western Switzerland where Jones had intended setting up his business the innovator was given the cold shoulder. The locals, who mainly produced watch parts in their homes, feared the modern machines and the concept of mass production even if it did have the indisputable advantage of consistent quality.
Six watches – six founding legends of today’s IWC watch families
Six of these milestones have been brought back as vintage models from the company’s proud history into the modern day for the manufacturer’s 140th anniversary – even if it is not a “round” one. Not as copies, something that IWC has never done, but as new interpretations of good old friends. Some with ultra-modern, up-to-date automatic IWC movements which are also used in the current series-produced models. Where historical accuracy demands it they have been equipped with hand-wound pocket watch movements based on the 98 calibre, the most famous
IWC calibre and the one that has been made for the longest, but they have also been expanded, incorporating some of the elements of the earliest Jones movements. And, to the extent that their predecessors had not already appeared in the IWC extra-large format, the case of some of the vintage models has increased in size on its journey through time, which on first sight makes them distinguishable from the originals. But in this way they have also taken on completely new watch personalities. They illustrate how, for example, a 1955 Ingenieur would have looked if its case had had a 42.5 mm diameter rather than 37.5 mm.
