Clockmaker / watchmaker
Thomas Tompion
Also recorded as: Tompion, Thomas · Tompion & Graham · Tompion and Banger
Often called the father of English clockmaking; maker of the Greenwich observatory clocks of 1676.
Born in Bedfordshire, Tompion was admitted to the Clockmakers' Company in 1671 and worked with Robert Hooke on early balance-spring watches. In 1676 he made the two year-going clocks for John Flamsteed at the new Royal Observatory, with a form of deadbeat escapement designed by Richard Towneley.
Tompion's workshop numbered its clocks and watches — an early system of serial production — and made equation clocks, grande sonnerie bracket clocks and repeating watches for William III and the aristocracy. He worked in partnership with Edward Banger and later George Graham, and is buried in Westminster Abbey.
- Country
- England
- City / centre
- London (Fleet Street)
- Life / active
- c. 1639–1713
- Status
- Historical individual
- Key people
- Thomas Tompion; Edward Banger; George Graham; Robert Hooke
Innovations & specialities
- Greenwich year-going regulators (1676)
- Serial numbering of clocks and watches
- Cylinder escapement patent with Booth and Houghton (1695)
- Equation and grande sonnerie clocks
Works by Thomas Tompion in the catalogue
Open in the catalogue →
Clocks · ca. 1690
Bracket clock by Thomas Tompion, England, ca. 1690
Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Movements & Components · 1690
Pocket watch verge escapement movement by Thomas. Tompion, London, England,1690
Science Museum Group, London
Clocks · ca. 1696
Table or bracket clock by Thomas Tompion, United Kingdom, ca. 1696
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Movements & Components · 1692
Watch movement by Tompion, Thomas, England, 1692
Science Museum Group, London
Clocks · c.1705
EIGHT DAY LONG CASE CLOCK Ebonised pearwood veneer on oak carcase Inscribed 'Tho Tompion and Edw Banger London', made in about 1705
Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Movements & Components · 1701-1708
Watch movement by Tompion and Banger, England, 1701-1708
Science Museum Group, London
Clocks · 1708
Clock by Tompion and Banger, England, 1708
Science Museum Group, London
Movements & Components · 1711
Watch movement by Tompion, Thomas; Graham, George, England, 1711
Science Museum Group, London
Pocket Watches · 19th or 20th century, in the style of 16th–early 17th century
Watch by Thomas Tompion, United Kingdom, 1800–1917
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Linked through the Atlas maker authority list, which reconciles the spellings used by different institutions. Attributions are as stated by each holding institution or auction house.
