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Choose To Buy The Affordable Aquatimer Replica IWC

Whether they'll admit it or not, despite their Protestant roots, the Swiss watch titans have always cast themselves in the mold of the Greek Gods, a pantheon of horological divinities dwelling in the seclusion of their Genevoise Mount Olympus crafting rare mythical timepieces which they deign to bestow upon us mortals, if and when the mood strikes them.

But if Kurt Klaus, the legendary former technical director Aquatimer Replica IWC was a Greek mythological figure he'd be Prometheus, the bringer of light and enlightenment to humanity. Because previous to 1985 the perpetual calendar was a revered, coveted rare but fragile complication. Something to be kept in a safe and gazed at periodically in fanatical devotion.

Aquatimer Replica IWC

As detailed here, this complication automatically compensates for the shifting rhythms of the 30/31-day cycle of the months throughout the year. But more importantly, it also automatically compensates for the 28 days of February and even knows when to add the extra day on the 29th on the leap year. Imagine a watch that can provide you day, date, month, leap year and phase of the moon at all times, as long as you keep it wound. But the challenge occurs when you don't wind your watch and it stops. Then you have to use a series of fidgety pushers, integrated into the case, and a stylus to correct each and every one of these indications individually. Worse, in most perpetual calendars if you accidentally try to adjust itduring the date changeover period, you can jam or damage the movement badly.

In Klaus' mind there had to be a better way. A few years earlier he'd specialized in making calendar and moonphase pocket watches at IWC. Bear in mind that in the late 70s the entire Swiss watch industry was convinced that battery powered quartz watches were the future. But nonetheless IWC felt compelled to keep mechanical watchmaking alive. Klaus recalls, I made a moonphase pocket watch, a simple calendar. I was lucky because, although most companies would have thought it crazy to produce a mechanical watch at this time, IWC decided to experiment and make a limited edition of the watch. We made 100 pieces, just to see if there was any demand. We presented them at the Basel Fair in 1976 and they sold out in record time. It was excellent motivation to continue developing. The Sales Director Hannes Pantli came to me and said: Stop with pocket watches, they are out of fashion. Now do the same in a wristwatch. This was the birth of the Da Vinci Perpetual Calendar.

Because Klaus immediately began to visualize not a simple calendar wristwatch but aperpetual calendar with one big difference: Rather than having all the irritating pushers he wanted all the indications controlled by the same crown used to set thetime. But this was in an era where all his calculations had to be done manually. Says Klaus, When I made the Perpetual Calendar, I didn't know exactly what a computer was. I made all my sketches on the drawing board. I made the prototypes and after manually making the calculations. But more than a better, easier to use watch, Klaus wanted to make his complication easier to produce, to make it more accessible to a whole new generation of customers. He explains, I like to call it the new generation of a perpetual calendar I wanted to make one that could be produced in serial production. And this is the heart of IWC. We never wanted to make uniques pieces. For IWC, the watch industry is important not the individual watch, so I tried to make the calendar for industrial production, as well as with a system that was easy to use. After endless of hours of contemplation and calculation he created a module that included not just day, date, month, leap year but also a four-digit year indication and a moonphase display that was accurate to 1 day in 177 years. And it was relatively simple to produce and a breeze to use.

At the same time IWC's designer Hano Burtscher had dreamed of a watch case inspired byLeonardo da Vinci's recurring circles in his plans for a harbor fort in Piombino from 1499. Together they created the Da Vinci perpetual calendar reference 3750.