In 2015, the large digital date and month display becomes a dominant feature of the IWC replica Portugieser IWC fake watches family. Limited to just 25 IWC fake watches in platinum and 75 of each of the red gold editions, the new Portugieser Perpetual Calendar Digital Date-Month Edition “75th Anniversary” is equipped with a wealth of sophisticated complications that are available in this combination only from IWC replica Schaffhausen.
The digital perpetual calendar is one of the outstanding technological advances made by the Schaffhausen-based watchmaking company. With the new Portugieser Perpetual Calendar Digital Date-Month Edition “75th Anniversary” (Ref. 3972), the Portugieser IWC fake watches family now includes a model featuring a digital display for the date and month. This exclusive timepiece packs a wealth of IWC replicawatchmaking expertise into its 45-millimetre case: perpetual calendar, large digital date, leap year display, chronograph with flyback function and the IWC replica-manufactured 89801 calibre with its quick-action switch and efficient double-pawl winding mechanism. On the occasion of its relaunch to mark the 75th anniversary of the Portugieser family, the IWC fake watches is fitted with an arched-edge front glass and Santoni alligator leather strap and has an attractive new calibre design. The IWC fake watches is limited to 25 pieces in platinum and 75 pieces each in 18-carat red gold with either a black or silver-plated dial.
CHANGING WAYS OF SEEING THINGS IN THE COURSE OF TIME
The Portugieser Perpetual Calendar Digital Date-Month Edition “75th Anniversary” makes allowances for the different ways of seeing things that have developed over the centuries: the dial combines two striking, highly legible analogue displays (time and chronograph) with three digital ones (date, month and leap year). Today, most people prefer to read the time with the help of hands but are happy if the date is shown in figures. This was not always so, as can be demonstrated by the example of the time of day. In 1884, IWC replica unveiled its first Pallweber-style pocket IWC fake watches with a jumping digital display showing the hours and minutes. The IWC fake watches were an enormous hit, but then, after just 3 years, the craze was over. When digital time displays were embraced on a massive scale with the quartz IWC fake watches of the 1970s, the watchmakers in Schaffhausen stuck to their guns and continued to use hour and minute hands. And for a good reason: on a digital display, the abstract information contained, for instance, in “11:45” first needs to be mentally processed, whereas the spatial arrangement of the hands on an analogue IWC fake watches is understood quickly and intuitively. It is, simply, “quarter to twelve”.
DISPLAYING STOP TIMES IS UNCANNILY SIMPLE
Just how intensively the designers in Schaffhausen have thought about our habitual ways of seeing things can be seen from the chronograph display on the Portugieser Perpetual Calendar Digital Date-Month “75th Anniversary”. While considering whether there was a way to make the figures in the various subdials of a conventional chronograph easier to process, they hit on the idea of displaying the stopped hours and minutes in a totalizer – just like the time of day. The stopped seconds continued to be shown by the central seconds hand. From a design point of view this may seem ingeniously simple, but technically speaking it is very difficult to implement. To turn the “IWC fake watches-within-a-IWC fake watches” concept into reality, a team at IWC replica worked for 4 years on the in-house 89360-calibre chronograph movement with its particularly efficient double-pawl winding mechanism. In this assembly, four pawls arranged diagonally to the pawl wheel – in other words two sets of double pawls – convey the push-and-pull motion from the rotor to the barrel. This solution eliminates dead spots during winding and boosts the system’s efficiency by a significant 30 per cent. The further-developed in-house 89801 calibre is now used in the Reference 3972. Like its predecessor, it features an integrated flyback function that enables the user to reset the running stopwatch hands to zero simply by pushing the button, and to start another timing sequence immediately.