William Mudge was a son of Dr John Mudge of Plymouth, and a grandson of Zachariah Mudge; and was himself born in Plymouth on 1 December 1762. He early on showed some interest in joining the Army and entered the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich in 1777. In 1779, he received a commission as second lieutenant in the Royal Artillery, and fought in the American War of Independence under General Cornwallis in Carolina, where he was promoted to first lieutenant in 1781. On his return home, he was stationed at the Tower of London, where he also lived, but found himself with an excess of spare time, and asked his superiors if he could use this time to study ‘ the higher mathematics’ and mechanics, and, in doing so, became an expert mathematician.
At about this time, the Revolution in France was making it an urgent necessity to accurately map for military purposes, the geography and topography of Great Britain, and the idea of the Ordnance Trigonometrical Survey was born. Mudge did not originate the idea: this was a General Roy, who then asked what officers of the Artillery and Engineers were best qualified to do this work, and the names of Lieut.Colonel Edward Williams and Lieutenant Mudge were immediately put forward, as easily the best qualified to do so. Col. Williams, as the senior officer, acted as head of the Ordnance Survey, with Mudge working under him, but Williams died in 1798, and then Mudge took over as director.
Sir Joseph Banks, President of the Royal Society at that time, who was so impressed by the ‘zeal, diligence and ability’ of Mudge in the work he had done so far, said that there would be no doubt about his being elected to the Royal Society that year, and he was duly elected.
So, William now set about the triangulation of Great Britain, a job that required him to be out in the field most of the time, and a project that took him thirty years to complete. Thus, it was largely due to William Mudge that the foundation work for the Ordnance Survey was done.
He was promoted brevet major in 1801, regimental major in 1803, and lieutenant colonel in 1804.
While working on the Survey, he actually lived in the Tower of London, where the work was based, but in 1808, he bought a house in Holles Street, where he lived for the rest of his life.
In addition to the work of the Survey, in 1809, he was appointed Lieutenant Governor of the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich, and public examiner at the newly founded Addiscombe Military Seminary, and he made sure that surveying was part of the curriculum at both establishments.
In 1813, it was determined to extend the meridian arc of longitude into Scotland. Mudge superintended this, sometimes doing the measurements himself, sometimes helped by his son, Richard Zachariah Mudge (q.v.).
On 4 June, he was promoted brevet colonel, and in 1814 regimental colonel. In 1817, he was awarded a degree of LL.D from the University of Edinburgh. In 1818, he was appointed a commissioner to the new board of longitude. In 1819, he was visited at work by the King of Denmark, and he presented Mudge with a gold chronometer, a fitting climax to an industrious life.
In the same year, he began the survey of Scotland, and was finally promoted to major-general. He died on 17 April, 1820, aged 57.
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