Ron_W
1574
From the www.blancpain.com site, on page 12 out of 88 , it says :
On the movement side, Frédéric-Emile was particularly fascinated by the challenges of automatic winding. In the mid-1920s he made the acquaintance of a British watchmaker, John Harwood who had been working on bringing an automatic winding system, then solely existing in pocket watches, into the world of wristwatches. Working together and utilising as a starting point one of Blancpain’s base calibres, Harwood and Blancpain succeeded in 1926 in producing the world’s first automatic winding wristwatch. Amazing for its time, the Blancpain Harwood watch placed a thick winding rotor off the end of the movement, allowing it to move back and forth in its channel over a 180 degree arc.
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A historic Harwood automatic movement made by Blancpain is maybe of interest to you ?? BLANCPAIN HISTORICAL TIMEPIECES – HARWOOD AUTOMATIC (1926) – THE WORLD’S FIRST AUTOMATIC WRIST WATCH
I didnt know Blancpain was involved in this, please read picture from catawiki ...
Well not quite
World's first automatic wristwatch? Chapuis and Jaquet's History of the Self-Winding Watch - 1770 to 1931, pg. 212: L. Leroy & Cie. are credited with the first automatic wrist watches in 1922, using their "Système de remontage automatique". One came up fo...
1931 or 1935
According to the book, the company Aegler, société anonyme Fabrique des montres Rolex & Gruen began using the automatic calibre 620 NA in some their brands in 1931, but the first Rolex-branded use of this movement was 1935. Perhaps some Rolex experts can ...
LOL, that's funny
they also "apologized" to Smiths for claiming Everest. The marketing dept obviously figured that publicity at the time far outweighed a mea culpa later on. Still today they don't discourage this myth, helps that Smiths is kaput of course. ...
But he got the first Swiss patent for this device with oscilating mass ? https://www.harwood-watches.com/en/history/index.html
John Harwood travelled to Switzerland several times since he felt that only there could he find the technical conditions for realizing his invention. On September 1, 1924 the Swiss Confederation in Berne awarded him Patent No. 10 65 83 for his pioneering ...
The movement was designed by Fortis, the Blancpain connection is co-branding for the French market.
Production was by A Schield (AS, late part of Ebauche SA). And to be honest, not a success - a flimsy movement with issues and not very reliable.
From the www.blancpain.com site, on page 12 out of 88 , it says :
On the movement side, Frédéric-Emile was particularly fascinated by the challenges of automatic winding. In the mid-1920s he made the acquaintance of a British watchmaker, John Harwood who had been working on bringing an automatic winding system, then sol...
Well, to my knowledge as well it was really Fortis / Walter Vogt:
www.harwood-watches.com
I think that movement has been “violated”
Worse than any other I have seen. Shame on the people that did it. Cazalea
According to his son also, Fortis took on production and Harwood oversaw production, but he believed Blancpain also had a license. http://qp.granularit.com/media/38316/Harwood.pdf
“It should have been the invention that made my father a fortune – after he had perfected the design he left the Isle of Man and moved to London because it was easier to commute back and forth to Switzerland. He managed to get Fortis to take the design on...
