The Multifort was introduced by Mido in 1934 as a practical, all-purpose wristwatch that was antimagnetic, water resistant and shock resistant at a time when few watches offered any of these qualities. It used a decagonal waterproof case made by Taubert and Fils, with a screw-down caseback with ten flats and a cork seal around the winding stem; the casebacks are stamped “BRIT PAT 385509”, the British version of the Taubert patent. Shock protection came from the Incabloc system, developed by Fritz Marti and Georges Braunschweig to protect the balance staff pivots. A year later, in 1935, the Multifort Automatic added self-winding A. Schild movements, making it the first Mido to combine automatic winding with all three protections. The model matters as an early example of the robust everyday sports watch.

The Multifort marked a change of direction for Mido, which had moved to Biel during the financial crisis of the early 1930s and had until then been known as a novelty, design-led brand. To back up its waterproofing claims, the brand had the Multifort tested by New York Electrical Testing Laboratories: more than 1,000 hours in fresh and salt water, temperature cycles between 50°C and -40°C, immersion at 13 atmospheres and simulated altitudes up to 16,600 metres, with one of six watches stopping at 13,300 metres. Pilots who wore the Multifort during the Second World War praised it, and Mido used their testimonials in its post-war advertising. The cork stem seal was later named Aquadura in 1959.

Historians of the brand describe the Multifort as the foundation of the company’s success: the model and its derivatives were the best-selling Mido watches until the 1950s, and its popularity helped the company recover financially in the 1930s. Vintage specialists note one nuance, that the waterproof case and cork seal came from the supplier Taubert rather than from Mido itself, and that the brand’s own account of these origins is blurred because early records were lost. The original 1934 Multifort is no longer produced, but the Multifort name remains in the current Mido collection, where retailers describe it as the lionheart of the brand since the 1930s.