Da Vinci

The Da Vinci debuted in 1969 with reference 3501, notable for housing the first quartz movement produced in Switzerland, the Beta 21 caliber, enclosed in a hexagonal gold case. The name, a tribute to Leonardo da Vinci, was chosen to represent the meeting of aesthetics and technology — a fitting manifesto for a watch that, in the midst of the quartz revolution, aimed to show that Swiss watchmaking could innovate just as much as its Asian counterpart.

The line's most celebrated chapter arrived in 1985, when director Günter Blümlein assigned in-house watchmaker Kurt Klaus the task of developing a mechanical perpetual calendar fully integrated into a self-contained 81-component module (reference 3750), fitted into a distinctive cushion-shaped case. Klaus's mechanism displays date, day, month, four-digit year and moon phase — with an error of just one day every 122 years — and can be set entirely via the crown, an exceptional level of ease of use for a complication of this caliber at the time. The following year, reference 3755 introduced the world's first case in black zirconium-oxide ceramic, a high-tech material also borrowed from the aerospace industry.

In 2007 the line was reinterpreted with a tonneau case and the Da Vinci Chronograph ref. 3764, fitted with the first chronograph caliber entirely of IWC manufacture, the 89630. Ceramic and titanium versions followed, and in 2009 reference 3761 introduced a digital date-and-month display, a direct nod to the 1884 Pallweber pocket watch. The Da Vinci is no longer part of IWC's current catalog, but it remains one of the most significant chapters in the brand's history for the mechanical innovation it introduced.