The Forgotten Inventor of the Automatic Wristwatch

John Harwood’s story begins not in the storied Swiss Jura but in the mud of northern France, where during the First World War he served as an armourer and learned firsthand how fragile a soldier’s timepiece could be. The men at the front had no dedicated wristwatches—what they wore were trench watches, pocket watches modified with wire lugs and leather straps. They were essential for coordinating attacks, but they were also deeply vulnerable. The exposed crown was a constant weak spot: mud and moisture crept inside, and the daily ritual of winding only ground grit deeper into the mechanism. Harwood, a watch repairer from Bolton, Lancashire, understood this problem not as an abstraction but as lived reality. And he began to dream of a watch that needed no crown at all.

In 1923, he turned that dream into a patent for the world’s first automatic wristwatch. His solution was daring: eliminate the crown entirely, and let the watch wind itself through motion. Inside the sealed case, a “bumper” weight swung back and forth with every movement of the wrist, charging the mainspring. To set the time, the wearer pulled and rotated the bezel—a clever workaround that kept the case sealed against dirt and water. What Harwood had created was not just another clever mechanism, but a break with centuries of watchmaking tradition. Until then, every watch had relied on its owner’s hand. Harwood asked the world to imagine a watch that lived with you, drawing its energy from your own motion.

Lacking the means to produce it himself, Harwood carried his invention to Switzerland and struck a partnership with Fortis in Grenchen. At the 1926 Basel fair, the Harwood Automatic debuted: a crownless, perfectly rounded wristwatch that seemed like something from the future. Blancpain soon licensed the design as well, and for a brief, brilliant stretch, watches with “Harwood” on the dial appeared in shop windows across Europe and America. They measured a modest 32–34mm, with clean enamel or silvered dials, and their notched bezels made them instantly recognizable. Reviewers hailed their convenience and durability. For the first time in history, a watch didn’t just sit on the wrist—it responded to it, breathing in step with its wearer.

But history can be cruel to pioneers. The Wall Street crash of 1929 and the Great Depression that followed crippled luxury markets. Harwood’s company, still young and underfunded, could not survive. Production stopped, and his name faded, but his idea did not. Other watchmakers quickly recognized its brilliance and began experimenting with their own self-winding systems. Rolex refined the concept in 1931 with its “Perpetual” rotor, an innovation that spun freely in both directions and became the template for nearly every automatic thereafter. Eterna later introduced its ball-bearing rotor in 1948, solving friction issues and making automatics more reliable, while brands like Omega and Longines turned Harwood’s spark into a defining feature of mid-century watchmaking. Though Harwood himself never profited, his invention set the entire industry on a new course.

And yet the truth remains: it was Harwood—the quiet English repairer from Bolton—who broke with tradition first. He dared to imagine that timekeeping could be effortless, that a watch could live as naturally as the person who wore it. His automatic was not simply a new mechanism but a bold statement that centuries of winding could be left behind. Though his company fell to history’s hardships, his invention endured, and every automatic wristwatch made since carries something of his vision. For collectors today, the rare surviving Harwood Automatics are more than curiosities; they are milestones, proof that one man’s determination in the wake of war reshaped the very way the world keeps time.