IWC - Portuguese Perpetual Calendar Digital Date-Month edition "75th Anniversary"
With the new Portuguese Perpetual Calendar Digital Date-Month Edition "75th Anniversary" (Ref. 3972), the Portuguese watch family now includes a model featuring a digital display for the date and month. Its 45-millimetre case includes the perpetual calendar, the large digital date, the leap year display, the chronograph with flyback function and the IWC-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 Portuguese family, the watch is fitted with an arched-edge front glass and Santoni alligator leather strap and has a new calibre design.
Today, most people prefer to read the time with the help of hands but are happy if the date is shown in figures. So, the dial combines two striking, highly legible analogue displays (time and chronograph) with three digital ones (date, month and leap year).
While considering whether there was a way to make the figures in the various subdials of a conventional chronograph easier to process, the designers in Schaffhausen 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 "watch-within- a-watch" concept into reality, a team at IWC 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 doublepawls - 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.
The IWC-manufactured 89801 calibre gets all its power from a second source of energy, the so-called quick-action switch. Every night, when the date display moves forward, the switch siphons off a little of the energy, stores it and then discharges it precisely at the end of the month or year when, in addition to the date and month disc, the leap year disc also needs to be advanced. The perpetual calendar can be set easily using the crown. It will not require correction until 2100, a year that breaks with the conventional 4-year cycle and will not be a leap year.
The see-through sapphire-glass back provides a view of the meticulously finished movement consisting of 474 individual parts. Following further development, the IWC-manufactured 89801 calibre now has a number of new features: the rotor and the inset "Probus Scafusia" medallion are now slightly more delicate in design and made of solid red gold. Other new highlights include the decorative blued screws, which together with the red jewels and the Geneva stripes on the plate constitute an attractive ensemble.
The watch is limited to 25 pieces in platinum and 75 pieces each in 18-carat red gold with either a black or silver-plated dial.
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