Tribute to a great inventor
Kurt Klaus invented the ingenious perpetual calendar of the Da Vinci more than 20 years ago. The gifted watchmaker has been working and developing products for IWC Schaffhausen for 50 years. A special edition of the Da Vinci is being produced in his honour, housed in the new tonneau-shaped case and limited to 600 watches.
“Eternal lasts longest.” This sentence, which provided a highly apt title for his most important invention, is a maxim that will always remind us of him when he eventually, although hopefully not for a long time yet, closes the door of his studio at IWC Schaffhausen behind him for the last time. Kurt Klaus (72), an unusually gifted watchmaker, had his hour of glory as a designer in 1985 with the autonomous perpetual calendar for the Da Vinci. But he also takes the creative credit for the development of many other significant movements for IWC.
Yet the greatest achievement, and one that remains inseparably linked with his name in the horological world, is the taming and simplification of this fascinating complication. Without it, the Grande Complication in 1990, followed three years later by the Il Destriero Scafusia, would not even have been conceivable. The perpetual calendar by Kurt Klaus, which relieves the wearer of the need to make any calculations, adjustments or corrections and displays the year exclusively with four digits, was already so advanced 22 years ago that, to this day, it has not been surpassed by any comparable construction. It opened the door to haute horlogerie for IWC Schaffhausen, which had been regarded until then as the specialist for the perfect, if simple, watch. The Schaffhausen manufactory has since taken it upon itself to produce every watch complication from the Minute Repeater to the Tourbillon, without exception and with increasing pleasure. The “Kurt-Klaus-Kalendarium” has since found a place in numerous other watches and also adorns the Portuguese Perpetual Calendar.
Eternal lasts longest. No other wristwatch calendar before or since has been equipped with a time reserve of more than 500 years. The interchangeable century slide, itself a clever idea of Kurt Klaus, which will need to be replaced at the end of 2100 by a new century slide with the numerals 22, 23, 24, symbolizes a length of time which actually lasts for only a small part of eternity in absolute terms, although from the point of view of individuals it extends into infinity.
This almost time-philosophical detail, backed by the longest reduction gear ratio of any mechanical wristwatch – producing one change impulse every 100 years – has made a significant contribution to the legendary fame of the Da Vinci. Incidentally, this length of time takes us as far into the future as the namesake of the watch, Leonardo da Vinci, lies in the past.
Kurt Klaus has been loyal to IWC Schaffhausen for 50 years. And IWC owes a huge debt of gratitude to the designer who, since 1999, has continued to spend a large proportion of his active retirement in the manufactory. That is why a tribute to the inventor – a limited Da Vinci Perpetual Calendar Edition Kurt Klaus – is poised to make its appearance on the threshold of a new chapter of the Da Vinci. It embodies the watchmaking technology employed since the Da Vinci first saw the light of day: the original perpetual calendar chronograph with an automatic movement, but on this occasion housed inside the 43 mm tonneau-shaped case of the new Da Vinci. A more elegant transition from one model to the next would be hard to imagine. Parting brings a new beginning.
500 examples in rose gold, 50 in platinum and 50 in white gold – of which the latter will only be available in IWC Boutiques – will carry the small signature on the dial at the bottom right between “4” and “5” o’clock and a relief engraving of Kurt Klaus on the back of the watch, in addition to the familiar indications of the date, day, month, year and perpetual moon phase. The case resembles that of the new Da Vinci chronograph, the first Da Vinci in the next generation. But that is another story; a new story.
From Leonardo's vision to the IWC Da Vinci
The Da Vinci from IWC Schaffhausen, which revolutionized the perpetual calendar in 1985, made horological history. Now, in the year 488 after Leonardo da Vinci, a new era is being heralded in the Schaffhausen manufactory with the latest Da Vinci family. The Da Vinci Chronograph is the first member. Every aspect is new. Only one thing remains constant – it likewise is taking a step forward into the future of mechanics.
With the Da Vinci Chronograph, IWC Schaffhausen is opening up a new chapter which retains its close links with the universal genius of the Italian Renaissance. The new Da Vinci line in its tonneau-shaped case once again pays tribute in a limited edition to the perpetual calendar in the form invented by Kurt Klaus. But the future begins with the Da Vinci Chronograph. It is the first in a range of new watches, in which horological passion, a zest for invention and engineering are condensed into innovative products. This is what the name Leonardo da Vinci stands for, even 488 years after his death (1519). It is not the constraint for an existing form or function, but the impetus and the watchword for horological progress. To demonstrate this, IWC began with the Da Vinci Chronograph.
Tradition
The chronograph is justifiably the most popular and the most widely distributed horological complication. IWC plays a large part in this tradition. For Schaffhausen kept faith with the mechanical watch with a stopwatch function at the end of the seventies, during the quartz revolution, at a time when scarcely anyone wished to know anything about it. The chronograph is the epitome of the modern age, which offers so many tempting options and because of that obliges strict timing. Ever since its invention between the start and the middle of the nineteenth century, however, the mechanical “time writer” – the first examples of which left a small dot of ink on the dial at the push of a button – has suffered from a single serious shortcoming, namely the reduced legibility of longer measured times. The system of the two totalizers mainly for 30 minutes and – separately – for up to 12 hours, has basically not been examined again technically since it was originally developed. This situation occasionally also nurtures the prejudice that the function itself is irrelevant, and that the complication simply meets decorative needs.
Innovation
Leonardo da Vinci would never have accepted the alienation of such an exquisite technology as that which lies behind the mechanical chronograph. He was always concerned, also as a designer of movements and an engineer, with the accuracy and utility value of his inventions. The Da Vinci Chronograph from IWC takes up the same challenge. That is why it translates the chronograph logically for the first time into a “watch within a watch”. To do this, it converts its measured times in the hours and minutes area into what to our eyes is a completely familiar, analogue time display via hour hands and minute hands and makes these measured times decodable at a glance. This is precisely what is concealed behind the central, generously dimensioned display circle in the upper half of the dial of the Da Vinci Chronograph: a watch within a watch, which makes the time measurable and available at the push of a button. The short stop times within a given minute are indicated, in the customary way, by the chronometer centre seconds.
The ingenious is simple. This maxim was already behind the autonomous perpetual calendar of Kurt Klaus, the aim of which was to make a previously exclusive, delicate watch complication free from faults and “wearable”. This perfection of a mechanical complication is also the aim of the first Da Vinci of the new generation.
The new aesthetic
It deviates quite intentionally from the previous design language, because the Da Vinci principle cannot be assigned to a round or square case architecture. It is an approach to problems, a work philosophy. Like Hano Burtscher before him with the round case from 1985, IWC designer Guy Bove pursued the aim of translating the canon of proportions and the perception of architecture developed by Leonardo da Vinci into the dimensions of a quite small “house”. An intricate, solid design of lasting beauty is the result. It is produced in the case materials white gold, rose gold and stainless steel, with a limited edition of 500 watches in platinum.
Engineering
The case contains as its mechanical heart the manufactory chronograph calibre 89360, newly developed by IWC Schaffhausen, which Kilian Eisenegger has created with his constructing team. And it is here that the Da Vinci project becomes truly exciting. The round automatic movement with a power reserve of 68 hours, a newly developed double-pawl winding system and the predominantly decentral chronograph mechanism with column wheel actuation, is an entirely new design based on the highest industrial design standard, Design for Six Sigma DFSS, which has been used consistently by IWC for some time. A so-called “robust design” was achieved in this way, in which every function and component in a closely networked process between design and subsequent production is inspected, tested, optimized repeatedly and checked thoroughly to exclude possible faults.
The automatic spring bridge already improved for the Cal. 80111 of the Ingenieur has been adopted from the ingenious winding mechanism design of Albert Pellaton. This is a central component, which carries the rotor and absorbs impacts from all directions. The pawl winding mechanism itself has nevertheless undergone a complete change. Two double winding pawls, making four in total instead of the previous two, transmit the energy of the rotor movement to the pawl wheel through push-and-pull movements. A dead angle is eliminated during winding, and the efficiency of the winding is increased by 30% by the new positioning of the pawls, which now no longer lie one after the other, but are arranged in pairs opposite one another on the pawl wheel. They are not controlled by the cam disc (heart) as previously, but by a crankshaft similar to that found in an automobile engine. The index-free escapement system with a special Nivarox balance spring, produced exclusively for IWC, exhibits clearly superior oscillation characteristics in return for a lower energy requirement and achieves a “quality factor” – as the relevant measurable variable is referred to – of more than 400, which lies significantly above that of most other high-quality and highest-quality movements. Fine adjustment is effected via precision adjustment screws on the balance wheel ring.
For the first time, the chronograph movement with its flyback function, actuated via a classic column wheel, permits the indication of the aggregate time recording of hours and minutes in the familiar form of an analogue time display with two hands. It can also run continuously with the movement without any decrease in amplitude.
This feat of strength demonstrated by proprietary chronograph design also meets the high demands of a watch which does not bear the great name Da Vinci simply in order to embellish itself, but rather in order to live up to all that the name implies
