IWC Schaffhausen Pallweber watches

The IWC Tribute to Pallweber Edition "150 Years" brings back the digital time display IWC built into pocket watches in the 1880s, and it was made for the brand's 150th anniversary in 2018. Josef Pallweber, a watchmaker in Salzburg, patented a display of jumping hour and minute numerals on rotating discs in 1883 and licensed it to several firms, IWC among them. IWC made Pallweber pocket watches from the mid-1880s for only a few years, with porcelain dials and large numerals on rotating discs.

The modern watches run on the hand-wound IWC calibre 94200, which beats at 4 Hz and has a 60-hour power reserve. It uses two wheel trains, each with its own barrel: the main train keeps time and drives the small seconds at 6 o'clock, while the second turns the hour and minute discs, released once every 60 seconds so the jumps don't disturb the rate. The windows are labelled Hours and Minutes in English, a tribute to IWC's American founder, F. A. Jones. The dials are built up in several layers of lacquer and finished to look like enamel.

The wristwatch is 45 mm across and 12 mm thick, with thin wire-style lugs, a convex sapphire crystal and a sapphire display back showing an 18k gold anniversary medallion on the movement. It came in three limited runs. The platinum IW505001 (also written IW5050-01) pairs a white dial with blue discs, 25 pieces. The red gold IW505002 has a white dial and white discs, 250 pieces. The steel IW505003 has a blue dial, white discs and a rhodium-plated seconds hand, 500 pieces.

The pocket watch, IW505101, puts the same calibre 94200 in a 52 mm red gold case with an engine-turned hinged cover that shows the hours and minutes through two windows. It was limited to 50 pieces, and IWC calls it its first pocket watch of the 21st century.