IWC Portugaise Calendrier Perpétuel IW502213

“Heroes of the sea, noble race…”, runs the first line of the Portuguese national anthem. It is an expression of the collective memory, in which the great seafarers of Portugal are still very much alive to the present time – Vasco da Gama, Bartolomeu Dias or Fernando Magellan. And in 1934 Fernando Pessoa wrote his national epic “Mar Português – Portuguese Sea”, a homage to the spirit of discovery and heroic courage of the seafarers who made Portugal’s former international standing possible in the first place. Five years later, in 1939, IWC supplied the first Portuguese watches commissioned by two importers in Lisbon and Porto. These were oversized precision timepieces with pocket watch movements in the tradition of nautical instruments. They established a completely new type of watch in those days. Today these watches are a permanent feature of the horological identity of IWC and they are sought-after ambassadors of a watch culture at the highest level all over the world.

In 2010, the Portuguese watches from IWC entered their eighth decade. They have remained entirely faithful to their historical heritage: clarity, size, accuracy and exquisite mechanics. Most of the complications from the Haute Horlogerie of IWC are present in this family of watches today. The horological inventiveness, which finds stylish expression in case diameters from more than 40 to 45 millimetres, is impressive.

Beguiling new eternity

Portuguese Perpetual Calendar

It is the Portuguese watch which one might easily have imagined on the wrist of famous seafarers. Learned individuals with the necessary far-sightedness, spirit of discovery and a concrete vision of the future. Because the future is precisely the area of expertise of this particular time machine, which is as beguiling as it is technically impressive. The perpetual calendar, invented 25 years ago, lives on here in all its original complexity and genius – in conjunction with an IWC-manufactured large movement from the 50000-calibre family with a seven-day power reserve.

This is an ideal combination for a complicated watch with calendar indications displaying the date, day, month, year in four digits and perpetual moon phase. The watch displays advance completely autonomously, mechanically programmed and synchronized with one another. Save for a leap day correction that becomes necessary in February 2100, this continues uninterrupted and without any intervention on the part of the wearer, who simply needs to input the required kinetic energy via the highly efficient Pellaton winding system of the automatic movement when wearing the watch. According to the complicated Gregorian calendar, which always assures years of almost constant length, the leap day that would be due to occur is absent at the end of February in the year in question, 2100, and this will necessitate an adjustment by a watchmaker. It might thus be appropriate to ensure that one’s grandson or great-grandson is aware of this fact. In that faroff year, incidentally, the century slide at the end of a long transmission chain will also be advanced by a couple of millimetres, and the numeral “21” for the next hundred years set in the display window in place of the currently indicated “20” to make the year display complete.

As far as the key astronomical indication of the Portuguese Perpetual Calendar, the moon, is concerned, it is able to match the precision of scientific instruments: in these watch models – and in these alone – the gearing has been modified, thanks to the available space, so as to permit the moon cycle to be displayed with unprecedented accuracy. A tiny residual error of 12 seconds per lunar period (29 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes and 3 seconds) will add up to a deviation of just one day after 577 years. In other words: only the moon in the heavens is more accurate according to our current state of knowledge. And then only by a small margin.