Arnold & Son

The Arnold & Son name traces its roots to 18th-century England, when John Arnold (1736-1799) opened his own workshop in London with the financial backing of William McGuire, specializing in the construction of highly precise marine chronometers. Arnold received multiple honors from the British Board of Longitude for his contributions to chronometry and became one of the Royal Navy's leading suppliers, developing innovations such as the bimetallic compensation balance and the helical balance spring with terminal curves — solutions that simplified chronometer construction, making it compatible with larger-scale production compared to the one-off pieces of the era.

In 1787 his son John Roger Arnold joined him in partnership, formally giving rise to the firm "Arnold & Son." After John Arnold's death in 1799 and his son's in 1843, the business passed into the hands of watchmaker Charles Frodsham, who progressively renamed the company until the original name disappeared entirely by the end of the 19th century: for over a century the Arnold & Son name was absent from the market.

In 1995 the name was registered and relaunched in Switzerland, in La Chaux-de-Fonds, as a deliberate tribute to John Arnold's chronometric legacy — a revival of the historic name rather than a direct continuation of the original company, as is the case for several brands with 18th-century roots. Since 2010 the manufacture has been linked to La Joux-Perret, which in turn joined the Japanese Citizen Holdings group in 2012 and still produces all of the brand's calibres in-house.