Mudge, Thomas

Thomas Mudge, (born Sept. 1717, Exeter, Devon, Eng.—died Nov. 14, 1794, Newington Place, Surrey), considered England’s greatest watchmaker, who was the inventor of the lever escapement, the most dependable and widely used device for regulating the movement of the spring-driven watch.

Mudge served as apprentice to the watchmaker George Graham before opening his own a shop a few doors away in Fleet Street in 1750. The quality of Mudge’s work brought him commissions from Ferdinand VI of Spain, the engineer John Smeaton, and other influential persons throughout Europe. He invented the lever escapement about 1755, introducing it on a smaller scale in a watch that he made in 1770 for King George III, then given to Queen Charlotte of England.

In 1771 he retired from business and turned his attention to the improvement of marine timekeepers. He achieved some success by refinement of detail and by somewhat complicating the mechanism but made no basic advance. He sent his first chronometer for trials at the Royal Greenwich Observatory in 1774 and again in 1776–77. During the second trial its performance was so good that it was not equaled by other chronometers at Greenwich for nearly a century, but his son’s attempts to establish a factory to produce his father’s timekeepers ended in failure.