Manufacturer
IWC Schaffhausen
Also recorded as: International Watch Company · IWC
Founded by an American engineer to combine Swiss craft with American machine production.
Florentine Ariosto Jones, an engineer from Boston, founded the International Watch Company in Schaffhausen in 1868, using water power from the Rhine. The venture struggled and passed to the local Rauschenbach family in 1880.
IWC produced Pallweber digital-display pocket watches from 1884, the Portugieser (late 1930s), pilot's watches, and the Pellaton automatic winding system designed by Albert Pellaton (1950). Kurt Klaus's simplified perpetual calendar (1985) revived the complication.
- Country
- Switzerland
- City / centre
- Schaffhausen
- Founded
- 1868
- Status
- Active (Richemont since 2000)
- Key people
- Florentine Ariosto Jones (1841–1916); Albert Pellaton; Kurt Klaus
Innovations & specialities
- Pallweber jump-hour pocket watches (from 1884)
- Pellaton winding (1950)
- Klaus perpetual calendar (1985)
