TO ETERNITY NOT BEYOND

The IWC Portugieser Eternal Calendar solves the problem of the leap year exception rule and extends its moonphases indicator accuracy to a stunning 45 million years.

- DANIEL GOH

Throughout history, humankind has always sought to keep time. It began with curious glances at the sun, moon and stars in the sky which turned into observations of the lunar and solar cycles. Then, as the broader notion of time was quantified into calendars, they looked at more minuscule values, breaking down and counting hours, minutes, seconds, and fractions of seconds.

Today we have come to a point in civilization where timekeeping is so commonplace that we take it for granted. The people who once watched the shadows of the sundial in excitement as the hours passed have been replaced by us, who lazily glance at a digital screen to get the time. So advanced, in fact, is our civilisation that now, we have the luxury of investing instead in traditional technology for the sake of preserving culture.

The perpetual calendar within a mechanical wristwatch is a beacon of such luxury. Even though we have mastered the tracking of the Gregorian calendar with digital means, there are watchmakers who have continued picking at the gear trains of movements in the hopes of making a perpetual calendar that is truly perpetual. And it seems that those watchmakers reside in IWC Schaffhausen. This is a story about the Eternal Calendar, a secular perpetual calendar mechanism that has finally solved the peculiarities of the Gregorian calendar, theoretically being able to keep the date for 'eternity' and also promises to keep an accurate record of the moon phases for the next 45 million years.

LEAP OF FAITH