The Harwood Self-Winding Wristwatch The earliest self-winding wristwatches known are two examples made by L. Leroy & Cie. One, made in 1922, is in a private collection, and the other, completed on January 21, 1929, was sold by Antiquorum, Geneva, L'Art de l'Horlogerie en France, November 14, 1993, lot 152. Both these watches are illustrated in La montre automatique ancienne, by A. CHAPUIs and E. JAQuET, Editions du Griffon, Neuchatel, 1952, p. 226. These watches, however, can be considered as prototypes as they were never made in series. The first attempt to produce a self-winding wristwatch in series was made in England by John Harwood and Harry Cutts, just after World War I. John Harwood (1893-1965), became interested in automatic winding while he was still an apprentice to a watchmaker. In the Isle of Man where he lived, Harwood experimented building prototypes one after the other, until he arrived at a solution which involved a 10 1 / 2 "' movement fitted in a 13"' case. He devised an originally type of hand-setting work operated by turning the bezel which, combined with a selfwinding system, made it possible to eliminate the stem traversing the case. Due to the lack of winding stem, the watch could only be wound by shaking it. After six years, Harwood finally found financial backing to go ahead with production and was granted his Swiss Patent (No. 106.583) on September 1, 1924. Harwood went into partnership with A. Schild, of Fortis A.G. (Grenchen, Switzerland), and launched the first series of Harwood automatic wristwatches which were presented at the Basel Fair. After a two or three years, Blancpain took charge of the production of these watches. The Harwood self-winding wristwatch featured a case which had no opening on the band and an oscillating weight pivoted in the centre of the movement. The weight pivoting to both sides of the movement gave greater stability, but the abrupt alternating movement required banking springs, since each oscillation produced a shock which tended to damage the movement. This was the same defect as found in the old pedometer winding system. However, the system to avoid over-winding of the mainspring was difficult to adjust and, combined with the quality of manufacture which was not entirely satisfactory for such a delicate mechanism, the Harwood watch was in fact rather short-lived. Literature La montre automatique ancienne, by A. Ct-JAPuts and E. JAQUET, Editions du Griffon, Neuchatel, 1952, pp. 226-228.