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The history of ARNOLD AND SON
The history of ARNOLD AND SON
He was born in Cornwall and moved to the Netherlands when he was 19 years old. He returned to London speaking fluent German. This earned him favor at the court of King George III of the House of Hanover, to whom Arnold presented the world's tiniest half-quarter repeater ring.
Arnold is believed to have met a man named William McGuire, for whom he repaired a repeating watch. He was able to start his watch company at Devereux Court, London's Strand, thanks to a loan from the latter.
John Arnold met King George III when he presented him with a ring that included a half-quarter repeater.
In 1847, The Religious Tract Society wrote : “Arnold is also celebrated for the manufacture of the smallest repeating-watch ever known; it was made for his majesty George III, to whom it was presented on his birthday, the 4th of June 1764. Although less than six-tenths of an inch in diameter, it was perfect in all its parts, repeated the hours, quarters and half-quarters, and contained the first ruby cylinder ever made. […] The king was so much pleased with this rare specimen of mechanical skill, that he presented Mr. Arnold with 500 guineas; and the emperor of Russia afterwards offered Mr. Arnold 1,000 guineas for a duplicate of it, which he declined.”
Arnold's early maritime chronometers were finished for official testing from a series he created in the early 1770s. Arnold submitted a timekeeper to the Board of Longitude that he thought could be made for just 60 guineas, and the Board awarded him £ 200, the first of multiple payments for his assistance.
Admiral Sir Robert Harland served in the Royal Navy. In 1771, he was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the East Indies Station, and during his expedition to Madagascar, he used the first Arnold's chronometer.
Between 1768 and 1779, James Cook conducted three major Pacific exploration missions. These were chances to put the astronomical and timekeeper techniques of determining longitude over considerable distances to the test. Cook's second trip (1772–75) was accompanied with the John Arnold marine chronometer No. 3. The Board of Longitude selected two astronomers to watch after it.
John Arnold creates his first pocket clock after inventing a detent escapement and other key design advancements (No. 8).
In the same year, English explorer and Royal Navy officer Constantine John Phipps navigates with an Arnold chronometer, writing in his book "A Voyage towards the North Pole," "The Board of Longitude sent two watch machines for keeping the longitude by difference of time; one constructed by Mr. Kendal, on Mr. Harrison's principles; the other by Mr. Arnold." I also had a pocket watch made by Mr. Arnold, which allowed me to keep the longitude to a level of precision well beyond what I could have imagined; the watch's rate of movement has changed from 2' 40" in 128 days to 2' 40" in 128 days.
The less contact between the balance and the escapement, the more probable the chronometer would remain accurate, according to John Arnold. In 1772, he invented a pivoted detent escapement, and three years later, he received a patent for a compensated bimetallic balance and a helical balance spring.
Arnold's pocket watch No. 1/36 is likely the most well-known of all his timepieces. The watch is praised for its precision after being submitted to the Royal Observatory in Greenwich for testing.
Arnold shared the findings of his accomplishment in a booklet. "An Account kept during Thirteen Months in the Royal Observatory at Greenwich of the Going of a Pocket Chronometer, made on a new Construction".
The name "chronometer" became commonplace after that and is still used to describe mechanical clocks that have been examined and certified to fulfill particular precise criteria. Only clocks certified by the Contrôle Officiel Suisse des Chronomètres (COSC) are allowed to use the name "chronometer" in Switzerland.
The Board of Longitude noted in their report on Arnold's pocket chronometer No. 2: "So far as this watch has been tried, it must be acknowledged by all, that it is superior to every one that had been made before it. Nothing therefore seems to remain but for, Mr. Arnold, to make other watches, to entitle him to the second reward offered by Parliament for improvements in this branch of mechanics, and also to the universal approbation and applause of his fellow-citizens."
Arnold's notion of "final curves" for the helical balancing spring was an important invention.
In May 1782, he patented the invention, which included a spring detent escapement and epicycloid teeth (British patent No. 1382).
After John Arnold formally retired, the firm was passed down to his son, John Roger Arnold (1769-1843), a skilled watchmaker. In 1792, two years after finishing his apprenticeship at his father's shop, he was transferred to Paris to study under Abraham Louis Breguet, a prominent French watchmaker and John Arnold's friend.
In one of Arnold's pocket chronometers, Abraham Louis Breguet displays his first tourbillon escapement.
On the main plate, a tribute is inscribed in French in honor of John Arnold: "Hommage de Breguet à la mémoire révérée d’Arnold, offert à son fils. An 1808."
On his journey to the North Pole, Rear-Admiral Sir William Edward Parry wears the Arnold's chronometer No. 2109. Parry was an English Arctic explorer who was most likely the most successful in the lengthy search for the Northwest Passage.
For his 'U'-shaped balance, John Roger Arnold was given a patent. He also became the Admiralty's primary supplier. No less than 84 of the Royal Navy's 129 chronometers are signed by him, his father John Arnold, or Arnold & Son.
Arnold & Son is carried on by Charles Frodsham, a renowned English watchmaker, after John Roger Arnold's death until the mid-nineteenth century.
Arnold & Dent's No. 4575 chronometer accompanies Dr David Livingstone on his expedition to South Africa.
With English Roots, Swiss Watchmaking
Arnold & Son becomes a fully integrated Swiss manufacture after a relaunch in 1995, creating and producing all of its movements in-house and honoring John Arnold's heritage through mechanical characteristics such as the real beat second and design components.
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