Harwood invented the self-winding wristwatch — and went bankrupt within three years

John Harwood was a British watchmaker born in Bolton, Lancashire in 1893. After serving as an armoury staff sergeant in World War I and a watchmaking apprenticeship in Oldham, he moved to the Isle of Man in 1922 to open a watch repair shop. In 1923, supported by a local businessman, he developed the world's first self-winding wristwatch — a design so innovative it could be hermetically sealed against water and dust, with the hands set by rotating the bezel instead of a crown.

Harwood patented the design in Switzerland in September 1924, but it took four years to find manufacturers willing to produce it. With funding from Manchester brothers Louis and Philip Alexander, he persuaded Anton Schild S.A. and Fortis to manufacture the movement. Blancpain made the watch under licence for France in 1928, and the Perpetual Self-Winding Watch Company produced it for North America. The watches debuted at the 1926 Basel Fair. In 1928, Harwood formed the Harwood Self-Winding Watch Company to market them in the UK.

The company failed in September 1931. The Great Depression had dried up consumer spending on luxury goods, and the watches were proving difficult to mass-produce — the self-winding mechanism was delicate, and the bezel-operated setting system confused customers accustomed to winding crowns. Harwood's company did not have enough capital to survive the downturn. About 28,000 watches had been produced by the time the firm collapsed.

John Harwood continued working as a horologist and was awarded the Gold Medal of the British Horological Institute in 1957. He died in 1964. His son, also named John, followed his father's career as a watchmaker in Somerset. The self-winding wristwatch outlived its inventor's company to become the standard for automatic watches worldwide.