SINCE 1912, FORTIS HAS BUILT WATCHES FOR A WORLD IN MOTION.
In 1924, Fortis secured the patent for the world’s first automatic wristwatch movement, developed by British watchmaker John Harwood. It was a revolutionary idea: a self-winding mechanism powered by the movement of the wearer’s wrist. No winding crown. No manual reset. Just time — moving forward on its own. This patent marked the beginning of a new chapter not only for Fortis, but for watchmaking as a whole. And it paved the way for what would follow just two years later: the world’s first serial production of an automatic watch — by Fortis.
