Albert Pellaton knew all too well the heartache and expense of losing a favorite timepiece to the damaging effects of insidious magnetism - he himself went through several watches a year paid for of course through IWC's payroll deduction plan. In 1950, a particularly bad year in these regards, Ernst Homberger himself credited Pellaton's watch purchases as the mitigating factor in a year of otherwise negative cash flows. It is said that the Board of Directors were beholden. It is also said that Pellaton was none too amused.
INGENIEUR
Auto-Amag Ref. 666A C.85226 Nov 54
ECO: 54- AP0601-amag
Rev.Lvl AA - sheet C
Designer: A. Pellaton Drawn: K. Klaus
For the four years leading up to the introduction of what would be the Ingenieur, Albert would lunch behind his desk daily listening to his favorite daytime radio show. His receiver of choice was the Ultra-R-728 of the most modern order - a gift from his wife in celebration of his triumphant Calibre 85. Homberger himself had suggested it, explaining that yet another watch at that time would be a cruel parody of Albert's failure to understand what was happening in his horological life.
Pellaton spent hours experimenting with different approaches to insulating his timepieces from invisible crippling forces, and contracted out scientific equipment and consultations with prominent figures, all without Otto Heller's financial approval and no certainty of success. Even Albert Einstein provided Pellaton with a schematic for understanding the Faraday principles, but it turned out to be the bumper circuit for an early arcade game, stopping yet another of Pellaton's watches dead in its tracks and temporarily paralyzing the left arm of his young apprentice, Kurt Klaus.
Einstein's reply to Pellaton: "What?"
Growing ever more desperate to save his watches and meet the commercial pressures coming down from the top, Pellaton embarked on some increasingly odd courses of action. In the photo to the left, he was seen testing a theory on grounding techniques that did in fact later prove useful in the production of color televisions, but had no practical use in watches. Below, his apprentice Klaus searches for something that Pellaton never actually defined, simply telling him "Call me if you see anything".
"Hey Albert, your wife is on the phone"
"I think I just saw something"
Eventually the Ingenieur became a great success, and Pellaton, having finally gotten rid of his radio, never lost another watch to the evils of magnetism. Kurt Klaus also went on to greatness, inventing among other things, a perpetual calendar that could actually be trusted to people who had more money than sense. By early in the 21st Century a new Ingenieur would be born, and Michael Faraday's theory of the cage would be replaced by Michael Friedberg's theory of the forum, neither of which, when translated into an electrical circuit, would properly accuate the flippers on a pinball machine.
