Charles Frodsham & Co.

Charles Frodsham (1810–1871) was apprenticed to his father, William James Frodsham FRS, co-founder of Parkinson & Frodsham. He entered chronometers in the Greenwich premium trials from 1830, winning second prize in that year, and set up on his own at 7 Finsbury Pavement in the 1830s. When John Roger Arnold died in 1843 Frodsham acquired the Arnold business and moved to 84 Strand; watches and clocks of the following years are signed with both names.

Frodsham won the Telford Gold Medal of the Institution of Civil Engineers for an 1847 lecture on isochronism and a first-class medal at the Great Exhibition of 1851, and was a juror at the 1862 International Exhibition. After the death of Benjamin Lewis Vulliamy in 1854 he bought the goodwill of the Vulliamy business and succeeded him as keeper of the royal clocks at Buckingham Palace. He was a founder member of the British Horological Institute, twice Master of the Clockmakers' Company (1855 and 1862), corresponded for years with the Astronomer Royal, George Biddell Airy, and published a history of the marine chronometer in 1871.

His son Harrison Mill Frodsham (1849–1922) continued the firm, which supplied marine chronometers to the Admiralty, high-grade pocket watches, carriage clocks and regulators. Charles Frodsham & Co. still trades in London; in 2018 it launched a wristwatch with the double-impulse chronometer escapement devised by George Daniels.

How to recognise the work: dials and movements are signed Charles Frodsham, Chas Frodsham or, in the years after 1843, with both the Arnold and Frodsham names and the address 84 Strand. Gold and silver cases carry London hallmarks, whose date letter gives the year the case was assayed.

Frodsham's output ranged from marine and pocket chronometers to keyless lever watches, minute repeaters, carriage clocks and astronomical regulators. The Admiralty bought sixty Frodsham marine chronometers between 1831 and 1920.