The Ingenieur Family

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NOW THERE’S A NAME FOR VISIONARY TECHNOLOGY: INGENIEUR

No other watch from IWC has cemented the company’s reputation for technical expertise as strongly as the first Ingenieur, launched in 1955 with an IWC automatic movement housed in a soft-iron inner case for protection against magnetic fields. The giant leap from hand-wound to automatic movements had been made four years earlier with the then revolutionary IWC 85 calibre with central seconds, whose origins dated back to the 1940s.However, it was only with the Ingenieur that IWC catapulted itself into the vanguard of Swiss manufacturers competing to create the first bidirectional automatic movement. Its winding system – featuring a rocking bar and rollers in the automatic 85-calibre family – goes all the way back to Technical Director Albert Pellaton and set new standards in watchmaking.

—Ingenieur watches prove their ruggedness in practical use under gruelling conditions like those found in bleak desert landscapes
Reference 5005

—Exclusive Feature: a 7-day power reserve with a red indicator for the last day on the display

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The Yacht Club and the Ingenieur SL in the 1960s and 70s, featuring the further developed 8541 and 854 calibres (with and without date display), were even more robust. The Yacht Club’s movement even had a shock-absorption system cushioned on rubber buffers. From 1976, the 8541ES calibre – the distillation of all the company’s movement-making expertise – was used in the Ingenieur SL, Reference 1832. This watch is still much sought after by collectors today, and its unusual shape has become one of the hallmark features of all subsequent models in the Ingenieur watch family: the five distinctive bores in the bezel, the “graph paper” design – as it used to be known to collectors – on the dial and the bolt of lightning in the logo. When IWC manufactured its first titanium cases in the early 1980s, the ultra-slim Ingenieur Titanium, Reference 3350, was one of the front runners. In 1989, IWC presented an Ingenieur, Reference 3508, with protection against magnetic fields up to 500,000 amperes per metre that could withstand even an magnetic resonance tomograph.

In 2005, the Ingenieur, one of IWC’s best-known timepieces, celebrated a resounding comeback: mechanical engineering at its purest in the shape of a watch. The new generation withstood shocks, impacts and vibrations, and functioned reliably in the presence of the magnetism – now omnipresent – emitted by an increasing number of machines and appliances. With its extra-large 51113 calibre, Pellaton winding and seven-day power reserve, the 45.5-millimetre Big Ingenieur in its stainless-steel case caused a furore when it was launched in 2007. A year later, it was unveiled in platinum and rose gold versions.

Ingenieur Mountain Top Mood
—Ingenieur watches are in their element in the world's most inhospitable regions

Whilst IWC’s Pilots Watches were inspired by the skies, and the Aquatimer family by the oceans, the element that gave rise to the Ingenieur was the earth. So it seems only logical that the raison d’être of the Ingenieur Automatic Mission Earth is mentioned in its name. For devotees of mechanical timepieces with a penchant for absolute precision, the Big Ingenieur is also available as a chronograph with an analogue display for long recorded times and a tachymeter scale.

Perhaps more than any other watch family from IWC, the Ingenieur’s name stands for ruggedness even under extreme conditions and a passion for nature paired with a lust for adventure. One man who knows all about this is adventurer and environmentalist David de Rothschild, with whose organization, Adventure Ecology, IWC has entered into a long-term partnership. Adventure Ecology harnesses the power of dreams, adventures and stories, drawing on them to inspire, educate and engage individuals, institutions and industry to move towards a smarter, more sustainable way of living. In 2009, IWC paid tribute to this commitment with a limited special edition watch, the Ingenieur Automatic Mission Earth Edition “Adventure Ecology”. And in 2010, David de Rothschild and his crew wore robust “Adventure Ecology” timepieces on an arduous voyage across the Pacific Ocean that took them over four months. The team mastered countless challenges aboard “Plastiki”, their avant-garde catamaran that consisted, amongst other things, of 12,500 reclaimed plastic bottles. It was equipped with a sail of recyclable high-tech material as well as solar panels, wind turbines and bicycle-powered generators to supply “Plastiki” with electricity. The spectacular “Plastiki” expedition drew public attention to the damage that we as humans thoughtlessly inflict upon nature. It is hoped that it will generate global awareness highlighting the need for us to reduce our use of plastic and polystyrene and to recycle or dispose of it more responsibly.

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—The "Plastiki" on its three month voyage across the Pacific Ocean

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