00:14Imagine, it's absolutely dark and you want to know what time is it. In the late 17th century,
00:21English watchmaker invented a mechanism that indicates the time with a very, very beautiful
00:27sound. That sounds a little bit strange, but remember, in those days there was no electricity,
00:32there was no light and with this mechanism it was easy to indicate the time. IWC started his own
00:39minute repeaters in the 1990s, very late, but those were the times when the mechanical watch became
00:46more and more interesting for watch connoisseurs that wanted not a quartz watch, who wanted really,
00:52really a classical mechanical movement with those traditional mechanisms. Still, those mechanisms,
00:59the so-called repeaters, or in the case of IWC, the minute repeater, is very, very complicated to
01:06manufacture, to construct, and therefore is still one of the, let's say, most iconic mechanisms in
01:14watchmaking. Of course, today we have electricity everywhere there are watches, but the minute
01:21repeaters still, it's some kind of a witness of those good old times when watchmakers were trying
01:27the best to perfectionate their art in watchmaking. The minute repeater is, of course, one of the most
01:36complex movements that we built in Schaffhausen, and it is a watch that not only shows the time,
01:44but you can also listen to the time. At the case you have a lever that you have to slide
01:50down,
01:50and then you can hear to what time it is. We have three different sounds. We have a deep sound,
01:56which goes dong dong dong for the hours, then you have a double sound, ding dong, that is for the
02:03quarters, and then you have the higher sound, which is ding ding ding, that counts the minutes, so you
02:09can listen at night what time it is. Apart from the beautiful sound, the minute repeater is so special,
02:16because the whole module has an autonomous movement. That means when you pull the lever,
02:21it winds its own force to release the spring system and gives you the sound.
02:40The complexity of the minute repeater is so difficult, and to explain the difficulty is that the module,
02:48all the parts, are specially made just for one movement. The watchmaker has to adjust everything
02:54by himself, and these are up to 250 different parts. With the unique sound and the complexity
03:00of the module, it makes our minute repeater one of the most unique complications.
Comments