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PRESS RELEASE -- With the third pilot's watch in succession in
the Edition Antoine de Saint Exupéry,
IWC pays tribute to the author and pilot's famous literary work, "Terre des
Hommes" (Wind, Sand and Stars), from 1939. And to this end revives the
quintessential aeronautical supplementary function: the UTC world time display,
developed by IWC 10 years ago. This special edition also includes a one-off
platinum watch to be auctioned for a good cause.
"My eyes scanned the dials repeatedly. All my subjects were well-behaved,
however, and every needle was precisely where it should be..." This is one of
the first sentences in "Terre des Hommes" from1939, in which Antoine de Saint
Exupéry describes a spectacular crash-landing in the Libyan desert. The flight
that was intended to take him and his mechanic Prévot from Paris to Saigon and
also set a new record for the route had come to an end. Without any doubt, this
account is one of the most thrilling descriptions of survival in the desert,
which "Saint Exupéry" loved throughout his life - with its sand, the night, the
silence and as the home "of wind and stars".
"Terre des Hommes" is perhaps the most impressive of Saint Exupéry's hymns to
aviation and the extreme conditions of the pioneering era. It is a song of
praise to the struggle between the airmail pilots and the forces of nature, from
which they wrested distances, heights and time. In this book, he also tells the
moving human story of the fight for survival by his friend Henri Guillaumet, who
crashed in the snow-covered Andes. He describes how he survived for five days
and nights until finally, close to death, he was found and rescued.
The settings could not have been more extreme: from the wide expanses of
Patagonia via the ice fields of the Cordillera mountain range to the hostile
vastness of the Sahara. Across continents and many time zones. What could have
been more fitting than to provide the third special edition of the IWC pilot's
watch dedicated to the life and work of the French author with a typical pilot's
complication: namely, the UTC display developed by IWC and first used in a
pilot's watch exactly ten years ago. The acronym stands for Universal Time
Coordinated - today, this has become established as the time standard, based on
Greenwich Mean Time, by which international flight schedules are calculated.
The distinctive feature of UTC is that it was designed to satisfy precisely this
requirement long before the boom in world time watches. While the reference time
in the display window continues to run unwaveringly - whether the Universal
Time, or also the local time at your place of residence - the actual time zone
for the present location can be adjusted easily in one-hour steps via the crown.
It offers unlimited adjustment, both forwards and backwards, and thus in any
flying direction. The date display is synchronized with the jumping hour display
and returns with it to the previous day as it is adjusted backwards - or
advances to the following day as the hour display is adjusted beyond midnight.
This mechanism makes using the various zone times straightforward and does full
justice to aeronautical demands.
In his day, Antoine de Saint Exupéry was unable to take advantage of such a
practical invention. However, the third watch in the special edition dedicated
to him also combines a visual reminiscence of the pioneering days of aviation
with the most up-to-date watch technology. To add to the memory of the
pioneering era of aviation, the watch is accompanied by an exclusive, limited
edition of the novel "Terre des Hommes" from Gallimard in Paris, the book's
original publisher. The year of publication of the novel determines the number
of watches in the Edition Saint Exupéry: 1939, of which 1188 in stainless steel,
500 in rose gold, 250 in white gold and a single example in platinum, which is
not for sale and will again be auctioned for a charitable cause at a later date.
The proceeds of the auction on this occasion will benefit the SIPAR organization
in Cambodia, which has devoted itself to providing schools with libraries and
translating children's books into the national language, Khmer for the past 25
years. Coincidentally, the first book to be translated by SIPAR was "The Little
Prince" by Antoine de Saint Exupéry.
The case diameter of the watch is 44mm, and the dial is once again in the same
tobacco brown color of the previous models. In this instance, too, the initial
"A" of Antoine de Saint Exupéry's signature decorates the dial, here at "9.00".
The 30710 calibre automatic movement with centre seconds hand, seconds stop
function and date display is used as the drive mechanism for the watch. The
convex and antireflective sapphire glass is secured against a sudden drop in
pressure, and the movement is protected against strong magnetic fields by a soft
iron inner case. The brown buffalo leather strap with its light-colored
backstitching is a further distinctive feature of this watch, which also holds a
great attraction for collectors. With its screwdown back and its screw-in crown,
the Pilot's Watch UTC Edition Antoine de Saint Exupéry is water-resistant to 6
bar. It is not a museum exhibit. Rather, it is an instrument with the attribute
"flight qualified", which nevertheless always reminds us of the discomfort and
sacrifices under which heroic pilots like Saint Exupéry, Guillaumet, Mermoz and
many others prepared the way for what is now a comfortable mode of travel.
The back engraving serves as another reminder. It shows one of the "tools", an
expression which "Saint Ex" also uses when referring to the aircraft. It is
actually a robust Latécoère 25, abbreviated to "Laté 25", in which he and his
colleagues flew as airmail pilots especially in Argentina and Chile. Its first
flight was for the Argentinean "Aeroposta" in 1929, with the pilot exposed to
the elements outside the cabin, which has room for up to four passengers or an
equivalent quantity of mail.
TECHNICAL DATA
Features
Mechanical automatic movement, date
display, 24-hour display (UTC display), time
display adjustable in one-hour steps via the
crown, centre seconds with stop function,
soft iron inner case, back engraving, limited
editions: 1 platinum (not for sale), 250 white
gold, 500 rose gold, 1,188 stainless steel
Movement
Calibre 30710
Vibrations 28,800/ h / 4 Hz
Jewels 23
Power reserve 42 h
Winding automatic
Case
Material platinum, white gold, rose gold,
stainless steel
Glass sapphire, convex, antireflective,
secured against drop in pressure
Water-resistant 6 bar
Diameter 44mm
Height 12.9mm
Weight
Watch in platinum with brown buffalo leather strap 210 g
Watch in white gold with brown buffalo leather strap 172 g
Watch in rose gold with brown buffalo leather strap 168 g
Watch in stainless steel with brown buffalo leather strap 115 g