The first automatic wristwatch (1923)

A Harwood automatic of 1929, from the first series of self-winding wristwatches ever made. Deutsches Uhrenmuseum, inv. 47-3543.Photograph: Museumsfoto · CC BY 3.0 de · Wikimedia Commons

The need: Harwood’s concern was sealing rather than convenience: the winding crown was the hole through which dust and damp entered a watch.
Made by: John Harwood, a watch repairer from Bolton working on the Isle of Man. British patent 218,487, filed in July 1923. Built by Fortis of Grenchen on an A. Schild movement, and by Blancpain under licence for France.
What was new: A weight pivoting at the centre and swinging through about 300 degrees between two sprung buffers, winding the watch as the arm moved. There was no crown at all: the hands were set by turning the bezel.
Worth knowing: Several thousand were sold before the Depression and the fragility of the mechanism ended the venture in the early 1930s.
Where it is now: The Harwood of 1929 shown here is in the Deutsches Uhrenmuseum, Furtwangen.

Historian’s noteFortis dates the launch to the Basel fair of 1926; archival work by David Boettcher finds no evidence of it and puts the first documented sale at Selfridges in London in November 1928. Leon Leroy is also reported to have made self-winding wristwatches in 1922. The claim that holds is the first self-winding wristwatch patented and made in series.

SourcesGoogle Patents, GB 218,487 · Fortis