The house of IWC

The International Watch Company was founded in 1868 by Florentine Ariosto Jones, an American watchmaker from Boston who wanted to combine Swiss hand skills with American machine production. He put the factory in Schaffhausen, in the German-speaking north, because the Rhine there could turn a water wheel — and because the established watchmaking valleys in the west wanted nothing to do with him.

The plan half worked. Jones lost control of the company within a decade, but the factory stayed, and IWC remains the only serious Swiss watch manufacture east of the usual map.

Two lines carry it. The Portugieser began in 1939 as a wristwatch built around a pocket-watch movement for two Portuguese merchants who wanted marine-chronometer accuracy on the wrist, which is why it is large and spare. The pilot's watches descend from military navigation instruments and keep the soft-iron inner case that shields the movement from magnetism.