Event

The family of Portuguese watches is being extended with an horological exclusivity: the Regulateur. It brings the tradition of earlier observatory and ship’s clocks back into the present. And it surprises with an entirely different way of measuring time.

Portuguese Regulateur

A rather different way of measuring time

The Watch Quote™ - January 18th, 2007

How often do we cast a quick glance at our watch? And perceive the position of the two large hands as merely a fleeting image of time information? Only to forget this information immediately. The Regulateur hails from an entirely different tradition of chronometry. It remains to this day the quintessence of the horological precision instrument, which in the18thand19th centuries had its place in observatories, laboratories or watch manufactories. This tradition is now being brought into the present with the exclusivity of the Portuguese Regulateur from IWC. The revival of a fascinating piece of horological history is attracting more and more connoisseurs.

What distinguishes the Regulateur from an ordinary watch? The three measured units of time, seconds, minutes and hours, are spatially separated from one another. The hour display has its place in the upper half, and the small seconds display in the lower half of the dial. Only the “large” minutes hand describes its circle from the centre.

This form of time display, which differs from that of all other watches, served a highly practical purpose in the early days of precision chronometry. The clocks of that time – mostly intricate grandfather clocks or wall clocks – were built with this dial architecture for observatories.

Marine chronometers also occasionally had such an arrangement of the hands. The intention was to prevent the “slow” hour hand from concealing the important seconds hand in particular. For it had a crucial role to play in the observatories, on board ships for navigation, but also in the watch manufactories, where new watches were “timed” or “regulated” with reference to such timepieces. The name says it all.

Displaying the time in this unambiguous manner has also found its way to the Portuguese watch from IWC, the precision mechanical object of desire for men that is worn on the wrist. Working inside the 43mm diameter case made of platinum (in a limited edition of 500 watches), rose gold or stainless steel (unlimited), is an original pocket watch movement in a class of its own in the form of the 98245 calibre. This mechanical drive mechanism, with manual winding and a 46-hour power reserve, is backed by IWC’s almost 140years’ experience and evolution in the construction of exquisite movements. At the same time, with its three-quarter plate made of nickel silver, large screw balance and elongated precision adjustment index, it brings to mind the first movements of the company’s founder, F. A.Jones. The finely decorated movement can be admired behind the coated sapphire glass back.

It would stand to reason that a cursory observer might form the impression that the watchmakers plainly forgot to include a hand in this, the latest scion of the Portuguese family, although this just goes to show that the regulator has always been an exclusive timepiece for specialists.

IWC Portuguese Regulateur

Ref. IW544403 / Ref. IW544402 / Ref. IW544401

Features
Pocket watch for the wrist with regulator display, mechanical manually wound movement with a three-quarter plate made of nickel silver, Glucydur balance with weight compensation screws and high-precision adjustment cams, Breguet balance spring, elongated precision adjustment index (Jones type)
Movement
Calibre	:	98245
Vibrations	:	18,000/h / 2.5 Hz
Jewels	:	22
Power reserve	:	46 h
Case
Material	:	platinum, 18ct. rose gold, stainless steel
Glass	:	sapphire glass, coated on both sides, see-through back
Folding clasp	:	available to special order in platinum, rose gold and stainless steel
Water-resistant	:	3 bar (30 m)
Diameter	:	43.1mm
Height	:	11.75 mm
Weight
Watch in platinum with crocodile leather strap (black)	:	128 g
Watch in rose gold with crocodile leather strap (dark brown)	:	114 g
Watch in stainless steel with crocodile leather strap (light brown)	:	89 g

IWC Regulateur
The mother of all watches

What at first sight might suggest that the watchmakers forgot to include a hand is in fact a sought-after rarity: the Regulateur – with the minutes hand extending from the
centre and a decentral hour and seconds display. And for one good reason: The Portuguese Regulateur with its manufactory pocket watch movement resumes the great tradition of observatory clocks.

Five hundred years ago, time was still an imprecise quantity. The first portable watches, which had just been invented, made do with a single hour hand. This would be joined only much later by a minutes hand and a seconds hand. Variations in accuracy of up to half an hour per day were the rule in early pocket watches. Eventually, however, after John Harrison had invented the first practical marine chronometer in 1759, with which an exact determination of longitude was possible for the first time at sea, accurate time became a valuable commodity with the ability to decide political power and the fate of ship’s crews. The astronomical observatories blossomed into suppliers of precision time accurate to the second. Customers included the maritime sector and scientific institutes, watch manufactories and later also the railways.

The so-called regulator – the mother of all watches – came into existence in this age of awakening and invention. Only the stars were able to perform more accurately. For the most part, these were intricate precision pendulum clocks with a spatially separated display of the three conventional units of time: hour, minute and second. Spring-operated marine chronometers were also provided with this configuration.

The reason for the decentral layout of the dial is surprisingly simple: The argument was that the “slow” hour hand must not, when it is present in the lower part of the dial, impair the readability of the small, but important seconds display for a prolonged time. It was thus banished to an inner dial of its own, where it could no longer obstruct the other hands. The minutes hand rotates by itself from the centre of the dial for the same reason.

The regulator became a symbol for the most accurate time measured by man. It goes without saying that watch manufactories such as IWC were consumers of the precise observatory time on the one hand, but that they also maintained it in their proprietary precision pendulum clocks for as long as possible, in order to be able to time all their new watches according to it.

With the Regulateur in wristwatch format, the Schaffhausen manufactory pays tribute to this significant piece of horological history. In spite of the fact that this horological speciality had scarcely been known previously in the private sector, its following is increasing steadily today. For it distinguishes its wearer as a connoisseur, who is able to appreciate this rather different way of displaying the time.

The fact that the first regulator from IWC is housed in the 43.1 mm diameter case of the Portuguese watch is explained by a number of sound reasons. The first pocket watches for the wrist from Schaffhausen, which today give their name to an entire family of watches, were also supplied to the Portuguese markets 70 years ago as particularly accurate timepieces and were essentially the first observer’s watches for the wrist. This was assured not least by their unsurpassed mechanical internal workings – the original IWC pocket watch movement with its legendary accuracy values.

The Portuguese Regulateur also remains true to this company tradition. With the 98245 calibre IWC manufactory movement, it possesses as its drive mechanism a pocket watch movement which counts not only among the most beautiful, but without doubt also among the most authentic movements that are still in production tothis day anywhere in the world.

As the calibre designation already reveals, the actual design of the movement is based on the 98 calibre that has been the subject of constant development and improvement by IWC for more than 70 years and is a true milestone of movement technology. It has been combined with various quality features of the earliest IWC pocket watch calibres, which can be traced back to the founder of the company, F. A. Jones, and the year1868. These include the distortion-resistant three-quarter plate made of nickel silver and, as a particularly typical feature, the elongated index for the precision adjustment of the accuracy, also known as the “Jones arrow”.

All of the technical advances in the detail that have been made since the days of F. A.Jones, have been integrated into this high-end movement with its classic balance frequency of 2.5 Hz– for example the resistance to shocks, the seconds stop function or the adjusting cams on the bars of the Glucydur screw balance. A glance through the sapphire glass back distinguishes this from the movement that also drives the Portuguese Special Edition Jones solely through the difference in movement decoration. Internally, however, the dial train beneath the dial has been modified for the Portuguese Regulateur to allow the separate hour display to be accommodated at “12 o’clock”.

This new scion of the Portuguese watch family, which has long been regarded as one of the few “enduring” design classics, displays the strong points of its large format to their best advantage on the silvered dial. All indications underline the true purpose of this type of watch: to display the time precisely and unambiguously. The dominant, lancet hand from the centre plays its part together with a classic minutes dial in the “chemin de fer” style, which takes its name from theform of railway rails. The hour hand moves overthe small dial with four Arabic hour indices beneath the “12”. At the furthest point from this, the seconds are displayed on the inner dial at “6 o’clock”.

The new, exclusive edition of the Portuguese Regulateur is limited to 500 watches in the platinum variant. The versions in rose gold and stainless steel are unlimited. All three watches are equipped with crocodile leather straps and clasps in the same material as the case.