MAGNETIC APPEAL

IWC positions Ingenieur 40 as the right watch for the right time, in more ways than one

- ASHOK SOMAN

Real talk: is your watch in danger of being magnetised? Of course the IWC Ingenieur 40 is impervious to such fields, unless you decide to see how it does its business by scanning it with an MRI machine. As the name of that device suggests, the magnetic fields at work there will wipe out hard drives without breaking a metaphorical sweat. The original Ingenieur watch, which debuted in the 1955 was designed to meet the emerging challenge of navigating magnetic fields, alongside a host of other such watches. It debuted with an automatic movement and an inner soft iron shell that would function as a Faraday cage. Even then, traditional watchmakers were certain that the coming digital age would pose a hidden danger to mechanical movements.