Thomas Tompion, (baptized July 25, 1639, Ickwell Green, Northill, Bedfordshire, Eng.—died Nov. 20, 1713, London), English maker of clocks, watches, and scientific devices who was a pioneer of enhancements in timekeeping mechanisms that set new requirements for the standard of their workmanship.
Nothing is thought of Tompion’s childhood, and his father’s blacksmithing is the one identified hyperlink with a metalworking commerce previous to his admission to the Clockmakers’ Company in 1671, initially as a brother (apprentice) earlier than gaining his freedom (journeyman standing) in 1674. He was appointed clock maker for the brand new Royal Greenwich Observatory in 1676. Elected to the livery of the Clockmakers’ Company in 1691, he served as junior warden in 1700 and rose to grasp in 1703.
About 1707 Tompion was made a freeman of the town of Bath, the place he's believed to have sought aid for an ailment, and he offered the town with a month-going timepiece that's nonetheless in use on the Pump Room.
Tompion was among the many first to use Christiaan Huygens’s invention of the steadiness spring to watches. In specific, he's credited with inventing the Tompion regulation (1674–75), and he was the primary (1695) to assemble watches with a sensible type of horizontal escapement. In clockwork Tompion used early types of dead-beat escapement (1675–76), and he launched pendulum spring-suspension for desk clocks and Barlow’s rack-striking mechanism (each about 1680). He was one of many first to make use of effectively profiled machine-cut gearing and to guard actions from mud.
Tompion’s sensible expertise enabled him to produce any sort of horological merchandise, and his versatility is displayed by his earliest identified commissions: a church bell of a couple of hundredweight (8 stone, 112 kilos, or about 51 kg) in 1671, a turret clock for the Tower of London, a quadrant of 3-foot (1-metre) radius for the Royal Society in 1674, and a balance-spring watch, underneath physicist Robert Hooke’s instruction, for King Charles II in 1675. Two year-going timepieces made for using Charles’s first “astronomical observator,” John Flamsteed, have been put in within the newly constructed Royal Greenwich Observatory in 1676; they have been paid for by Sir Jonas Moore, a arithmetic teacher and surveyor.
By this time, Tompion was established in enterprise in Fleet Street, the place he traded for the remainder of his life on the signal of the Dial and Three Crowns. Remarkably, inside just some years of his arrival in London’s horological group, he had grow to be its most famed member, and, with sound enterprise acumen, he capitalized on the demand for his work and was quickly the main retailer. In 1690 he was using as many as 20 individuals at his institution. His prospects have been mainly from the wealthiest lessons—royalty and the aristocracy of England and different European nations. He additionally equipped gadgets for presentation as diplomatic presents. Some of his best work, probably in collaboration with the designer Daniel Marot, was for King William III and Queen Mary II; examples embrace an excellent year-going spring clock and a extremely sophisticated touring clock. Two year-going equation longcase clocks nonetheless within the royal collections have been made for William III and Prince George of Denmark.
About 1701 Tompion took into partnership Edward Banger, who had been skilled within the enterprise and had married his niece, however Banger was apparently dismissed from the premises about 1707, and for the following few years gadgets have been retailed with Tompion’s title alone. About 1712 Tompion took into partnership George Graham, who had married one other niece, and Graham succeeded to the enterprise on Tompion’s dying. (Graham additionally shares the excellence of being buried in the identical plot and lined by the identical stone in Westminster Abbey.) During his life Tompion retailed about 700 clocks and 5,500 watches—together with about 400 sophisticated repeating watches, in addition to a small variety of scientific devices akin to barometers, dials, and even a lunarium. He was one of many first to quantity his gadgets in sequence.
Although Tompion deserted manufacturing of each the dead-beat escapement in clocks and his horizontal escapement in watches, these undoubtedly influenced Graham’s reintroduction of the dead-beat escapement (c. 1720) and his invention of the cylinder escapement (c. 1725). The requirements established in Tompion’s workshop have been the foundations upon which the 18th-century makers—akin to Graham, Thomas Mudge, John Harrison, Thomas Earnshaw, and John Arnold—have been to construct of their profitable searches for accuracy, particularly with respect to figuring out longitude at sea.