IWC Schaffhausen
Marvels of Engineering: IWC’s Double Chronographs
Ask me the same question and I’d take Barry Allen aka The Flash’s super speed abilities. High school PE? You could eat a slice of pizza while playing dodge ball and still decimate the biggest gym class bullies. “Feel my wrath beeyatches.” In fact with a modicum of training you could parlay your ability straight to innumerable tennis Grand Slam victories or even being world’s greatest boxer. Cause aint no body’s gonna hurt what they can’t touch. Cue Hammer dance. Or if you’ve got any musical inclination at all imagine the guitar solos you could rock. In-cen-di-ary. And in your downtime you can still chill on your couch watch Star Trek Discovery Uber eats Korean fried chicken and drink beer all weekend long wearing a flannel onsie printed with cats. Because you cause choose when and if you want to be fast. You’re the master of speed and time.
Mastering Continuum: The Split Seconds Chronograph
Close to super human in ability, in the watchmaking world there is one complication that gives mankind the greatest empowerment over time and that is the Split Seconds Chronograph. But hang on. A split seconds chronograph is not as name implies a timepiece that shatters the second down into fractions. Basically any chronograph beating from 2.5 Hertz good for 1/5th of a second to 5 Hertz, which divides down to 1/10th of as second will already achieve this for you. What a split second chronograph does it allows you to stop and record an intermediate time or lap time. And yes like a lot of the major accomplishments related to high watchmaking it came about from the aristocracy’s dissolute penchant for gambling. Specifically horse racing and the need to record lap times.
First Apart, Then Together Again
IWC Doppelchronograph
The thing with IWC is that has always striven to endow the highest traditional complications with a greater sense of functionalism while making the price of these complications far more accessible. It achieved this with the incredible fully synchronized perpetual calendar designed by Kurt Klaus, it did this with its modular minute repeater mechanism and with its mysterious tourbillon. Says Kurt Klaus the brand’s former technical director, Revolution hall of famer and watchmaking demigod, “It has always been IWC’s way to pursue functional innovation. The split seconds chronograph is an incredible complication, but in the past it involved a great deal of repeated fine tuning to set up properly and they were also somewhat fragile and susceptible to damage.”
How a Split Seconds Works
Let’s first look at how a split seconds chronograph works to understand where the challenge lies. On the very top of the chronograph movement sits the split second bridge while features the split seconds wheel and the split seconds brake mechanism, which look like two pincers. When you hit the split seconds button a column wheel or in the case of IWC a switch cam triggers the pincers to clamp down on the wheel causing the split second wheel to freeze and the split second hand on the dial to stop abruptly.
Habring solved this with two key solutions. The first was that he changed out the solid spring bar, to a small, coiled spring like the type you find inside a pen. Just way smaller. This gave a much greater elasticity to the return lever. The second is that he built his split second mechanism on top of the baddest most bulletproof tractor of a movement, the Valjoux 7750. To read more about this movement and how it was instrumental in saving the watch industry click here.
The Doppel
When the Doppelchronograph was launched in 1991, it was nothing less than a revelation and a profound statement of purpose. At the time only a handful of manufactures such as Patek Philippe using a modified manual wind Lemania CH27 and Blancpain using a Frederic Piguet automatic caliber 1186 even offered split seconds chronographs and all of these were stratospheric in price. IWC’s Doppel or “Double” emphatically declared, “There is no complication we are not capable of improving and offering at a better price.” It was an incredibly bold flinging down of the gauntlet that would reach its ultimate expression in their first grand complication, Il Destriero Scaffusia or “The Warhorse of Schaffhausen” also amazingly built on a Valjoux 7750 base.
The Ceramic Doppel Chronograph
The IWC Doppel Chronograph Top Gun
IWC’s incredible split second function naturally gravitated to some of the brand’s other iconic models including the Ingenieur and the Spitfire.