Chelsea Clock Company

The company grew out of the work of Joseph H. Eastman, who had been apprenticed to Edward Howard. Eastman co-founded the Harvard Clock Company in 1880 (renamed the Boston Clock Company in 1884) and then built a factory in Chelsea, Massachusetts, for his Eastman Clock Company, which was foreclosed in 1896. In 1897 the Boston businessman Charles Pearson acquired the property and machinery and began operating it as the Chelsea Clock Company.

Under Pearson the firm improved its designs and patented a ship's bell clock with a fully enclosed striking mechanism in 1900. It made clocks for automobiles from 1903, and the United States Navy, other branches of the armed forces and government departments became major customers. Chelsea's brass-cased marine and ship's bell clocks, which strike the half-hours of a ship's watch, became the firm's signature product, and it continues to make and repair clocks in Chelsea.

How to recognise the work: Chelsea clocks are signed on the dial and numbered on the movement; ship's bell models strike from one to eight bells through each four-hour watch. Dials of clocks sold by retailers such as Riggs & Bro. of Philadelphia may carry the retailer's name alongside Chelsea's.