Where the First Automatic Wristwatch Was Really Made | Fortis Manufacture Visit + CEO Interview

One hundred years ago, in a room that still exists inside the Fortis manufacture in Grenchen, Switzerland, everything changed.

On the 13th of July, 1926 — pretty much exactly 100 years ago — the first serially produced automatic wristwatch left that room. And most people have never heard the name of the man who made it happen.

John Harwood wasn't a Swiss watchmaker. He was a British outsider from Bolton with a simple but radical idea: get rid of the crown. Because where there's a crown, there's a way for dust and dirt to destroy a watch. His solution? Make it wind itself. He patented the concept in 1924, found a willing partner in Fortis founder Walter Vogt, brought in movement maker A. Schild to make the mechanics possible, and two years later — the automatic wristwatch was born.

No crown. A 270-degree bumper rotor. A rotating bezel to set the time. And the beginning of something that would eventually become the foundation of the entire mechanical watch industry.

Time+Tide UK Editor Russell Sheldrake visits the Fortis manufacture in Grenchen to tell this story from the ground up — and sits down with Fortis CEO Philipp Stürzel to talk about what it means to be the company that made it all possible, why Fortis has no interest in quartz, and the moment Rolex — in full-page ads in the Sunday Express — had to admit they didn't actually invent the automatic movement.