Since the BaselWorld-2012 Arnold & Son has introduced more than twenty new sophisticated manufactory caliber, many of which have no analogues in the world. Not many watch companies can boast of such outstanding performance, richly flavored with a scattering of different design awards. Favorite complication of Arnold & Son - dead seconds, like almost all the other technical solutions associated with high-precision measurements. That is not surprising, because it was a great watchmaker John Arnold who coined the term "chronometer" in XVIII century.
As you know, all of the key to watch mechanics discoveries were made in the XVIII century, and most of them are on account of the two geniuses, the two bosom friends: Abraham-Louis Breguet and John Arnold (1736-1799).
The winner of the notorious "Act of longitude" assumed George Harrison, but it should be noted that his chronometer №4 was incredibly complicated and expensive to manufacture, and it was almost impossible to replicate. In our time, his watch would be called a concept. Arnold also offers a much more simple and mundane design marine chronometers based on three principles: free chronometer descent, with the balance of the thermo-compensation effect (No. 1775) and a special terminal curve of the spiral balance (patent 1782). That is in contrast to Harrison's Arnold believed that all problems of accuracy of the mechanism can be solved by creating a "comfortable" working conditions for the regulator and all his efforts were aimed at optimizing the shutter.
Royal Observatory Greenwich tested 36 different watches of Arnold who first called chronometer master, from February 1, 1779 to July 6, 1780, and the total error was 2 minutes 32.2 seconds, and the daily error of not more than 4 seconds. This marine chronometer is stored in the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich.
In 1796, after studying at the Breguet joined the family business to the son of the great master, John Roger Arnold, successfully continued to create the clock until the middle of the XIX century. After that, the company has sunk into oblivion and remained a rich and glorious page for inventions in the history of watchmaking during the heyday of the British engineering. Reincarnation brand Arnold & Son occurred in 1995, when the ice breaks through the crust of the quartz crisis of uncertain sprouts watch mechanics were looking for support in lavish events and personalities the XVIII century. A group of enthusiasts established a company British Masters, which, in addition to Arnold & Son, was part of another brand Graham (George Graham - another eminent English watchmaker XVII century). Voiced noble purpose of revival of British watchmaking tradition was to be achieved by the Swiss manufactory Jaquet SA, founded by the famous watchmaker and businessman Jean-Pierre Jacquet. Three years later, the public were shown the first collection of Arnold & Son, which has become a key theme of the sea navigation and aesthetics of navigation in general.
The focus of the updated brand was selected rare (at the time) complexity - dead or independent second. Dead seconds, which is called the Arnold & Son True Beat, makes a leap in the second as in quartz watches, and its structure is essentially dead branch of the evolutionary development of chronographs. Ideological independent second is closely related to high-precision clock, as it allows much more accurately measure elapsed time to the nearest second.
Such an implementation of dead sesonds is compact enough and consists of a small number of elements, but its main drawback is that it takes energy to their existence in the place where it is so, and very, very small - in the end of the transfer wheel. Therefore, for a long time it was considered a simple solution, but fragile and the slightest breach in the conditions of its functioning, such banal slight thickening grease, leading to a stop of mechanism.