Thomas Mudge was born in 1715 in Exeter, the second son of Zachariah Mudge, at that time a teacher, who was later appointed the first Headmaster of Bideford Grammar School, where Thomas became one of his pupils. However, young Thomas showed no aptitude or enthusiasm for the academic life, but instead had a bent for mechanical things, especially watches. He liked nothing better as a child than taking apart clocks and watches, and then putting them back together again So, when he was 14, his father had him apprenticed to George Graham, an eminent clock and watch maker, in Fleet Street, London. After doing his apprenticeship, he set up privately: at first, on his own, but later, with a fellow ex-apprentice, William Button.
He was noted for the quality of his workmanship, and soon picked up commissions from important patrons, including John Smeaton, the engineer, Dr. Johnson, the man of letters, Count Bruhl of Saxony, and King Ferdinand VI of Spain, all of whom were delighted with his work.
In 1755 or thereabouts, he invented the lever escapement, which allowed for much greater accuracy than hitherto in clocks and watches, and has been described as ‘the greatest single improvement that has ever been applied to watches’, and which is is now an essential component of every mechanical clock or watch, and is the part whose movement gives clocks and watches their ticking sound.
Due to ill health, Thomas eventually retired to Plymouth, to live with his younger brother, John. However, he kept up his interest in chronometers (accurate time-pieces).
The Board of Longitude had earlier in the century held a competition to find an accurate way of measuring longitude, the lack of which had had a grievous effect upon shipping and trade, and was famously won by John Harrison. However, the Board was sure that even better accuracy could be achieved, and launched a second competition, which Thomas entered. One of the rules of the competition was that two chronometers had to be built, one testing the accuracy of the other. For total accuracy, Thomas built three. The chronometers were sent off for testing, including to the Professor of Astronomy at Oxford, who declared them satisfactory. But objections were raised by Dr. Nevil Maskelyne, the Astronomer Royal, the same man who had queried the accuracy of Harrison’s design earlier, and who argued again that the degree of accuracy of Thomas’s chronometers was not sufficient to win the prize. There was much toing and froing of correspondence between the Board, and Thomas’s elder son, also called Thomas, who had become a lawyer, and who argued that as they were the most accurate chronometers available, then they should win the prize. A committee was set up in Parliament to settle the issue, which decided in favour of Thomas, and he was eventually awarded £2,500 for the work he had done. One can only surmise that Maskelyne thought that his own ideas involving lunar calculations were superior to those submitted by Harrison or Mudge.
Thomas Mudge was thus one of the pioneers in the making of marine chronometers, which, over the course of time, helped save many lives at sea.
In 1770, George III purchased a large gold watch made by Mudge that incorporated the lever escapement, and which he presented to his wife, Queen Charlotte, and which can now be found in the Royal Collection at Windsor. In 1776, Thomas was appointed watchmaker to the King.
However, Thomas’s fame and fortune were short- lived, as he died two years after winning the prize, at the house of his elder son, Thomas, at Newington Place, Surrey on 14 November 1794, and he was buried at Dunstan-in- the- Wood, Fleet Street, his wife Abigail having predeceased him in 1789.
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