NOSTALGY FOR .........IWC POCKET WATCHES.

IWC chronometer Pocket Watches
Several IWC collectors have one or more IWC PW's in their collection marked as "chronometer". In Greek language "chronometer" means measuring time. No uniform definition exists about how a chronometer specifically should perform. Shortly after the founding of IWC in 1868, the design and performance of Swiss produced PW's reached its summit. Longer than IWC were in business : Patek Philippe, Vacheron Constatin, Ulysse Nardin, Longines and others. A competition between the well known brands developed : who was able to build the most accurate pocket watch? One must know that all these brands, including IWC, were able to build pocket watches, so accurate that its deviations were less than 0,5-1,0 seconds per 24 hours. Of course this was not true for every watch produced. It could be achieved by a few movements on which hundreds of hours had been spent to build, refine, finish and regulate these special movements by the best watch makers and "régleurs".
How was the accurate time determined during those days? Long before the quartz era and the arrival of the atomic clock, the exact time was delivered by Astronomical Observatories in different countries. In Switzerland were the Astronomical Observatories of Neuchâtel and Geneva, In France the Observatory of Besançon, in Germany Leipzig, in the USA, Washington and in the UK perhaps the most sifgnificant one : the Astronomical Observatory of Kew. At these Observatories the exact time could be determined by measuring the position of celestial bodies and stars. One has to take in mind that navigation at sea and in the air and all other precise time keeping activities on land were dependant from the best mechanical time pieces available...

Other than the well known high-end Swiss brands, IWC did not enter the "chronometer competitions". The strategy of the manufacture was more to build machine produced watches of good and reliable, constant quality. This does not mean that IWC did not submit watches to Neuchâtel, Geneva or Kew for chronometer testing . An international standard for chronometer testing was lacking, so the very hard to meet standards were different for each Observatory. The image shows a cal. 66 that successfully passed the test program of Neuchâtel.....

....
.....Already early in the 20th century, IWC started to develop its own tests for accuracy. An example is this Schützenuhr from Zürich, issued in 1907. Each watch produced came with its individual "chronometer certificate" in German language called "Gangschein". The Pocket watches were tested in different positions and at different temperatures. However, it must be clear that these test were absolutely not comparable to the test programs of the Observatories, where watches were tested for a period up to 6 weeks..
Next week Part 2
Kind regards,
H-G Aberle,
R.Birkenkämper,
T.Koenig,
A v d Meijden,
(alwaysiwc).

Just When I think you have exhausted your PW series, you bring us another fascinating story. Thanks Adrian

Thank you very much for this interesting read and fine pictures. It's always a pleasure to learn more about the history of IWC.

Kind regards,

Clemens

Kahil Gibran wrote "knowledge is life with wings" - and you and the team Aidrian make us fly!

Absolutely super post - thanks for sharing the knowledge folks. We appreciate it.

Best regards
Mark

Dear Bill and loyal IWC collectors,
I am "always" pleasantly surprised that you (Bill Barker) are "always" the first collector to respond to our series. Many thanks for this. Your guess of coming to the end of this series is unfortunately true. There are a few more topics but than this series will end. However, there are several posts that will come thereafter, discussing vintage IWC wrist watches. I guess we can entertain the Forum members for the coming months with information not published sofar...
Thanks, on behave of the team,
Adrian,
(alwaysiwc).

IWC charged for the regulation and the Observatory certificate as can be seen on the following page from the 1898 catalogue

Image from the Vintage Catalog Project

Cheers from the cellar

Adrian et al - another brilliant post and another very interesting lesson learned for a novice like myself. Your posts are all truly appreciated and I always look forwrad to reading them.

Thanks gents!

A very interesting topic. I did a little further research on some of the points you raised.
Thanks for the posting which has once again provided perspective and insight.

A comment for Cellar..
Hi Greg,
Your document is extremely important to me. I do have in my collection a cal 52 "Quality Extra". Through Thomas Koenig, I could find out that this watch had been marked in the Archives as "Réglage Speciale". I never was certain that watches with qualification "Réglage Speciale" were all sent to one of the Observatories to gain a chronometer certificate. From your posted page it seems clear that "Réglage Speciale" watches were indeed all sent to an Observatory to undergo a chronometer test for different periods of time. Unfortunately, many of the certificates have been lost for ever.
Thanks a lot,
Adrian,
(alwaysiwc).

Adrian and the others,

Keep these great and interesting articles coming as long as possible. We all benefit greatly!

Nelson

Here is another vintage pw: Savonette c.29 (bascule Piliers) manufactured before 1885: On the inner cover there is the inscription "Half Chronometre"
Is there anyone who knows what it means?

There exists some really old IWC watches (1880s) marked "Half Chronometer" on the inner back.

This is the explanation of Cellar in an old post:

"First though, at the end of the 19th century, watches with precision lever escapements were referred to as "half-chronometer", when the equality of lever and chronometer escapements had been confirmed in observatory competitions. This term was primarily used in England: the term in Glashuette is "ankerchronometer" (lever chronometer) for pocket watches with lever escapements and especially large compensation balances, but it is not much better. Both terms do not make sense, because they are not logical: if the main characteristic of a chronometer is its precision, and the detent or detached detent escapements only has significance when it is responsible for such precision, then watches with lever escapement are full, and not half, chronometers, as soon as they reach that precision".

I will be sad when this series reaches its conclusion. It has been one of the highlights of my ongoing education about IWC PW's and timepiece evolution. Thanks for the team's effort in bringing information to all of us!

With Cellar's weekly offering completeted we need someone to head into the sub basement and start a new theme.

Thank you and Cellar for the explanatiom!
Regards Hans