Clocks · Year-going clock
Year-going clock by Thomas Tompion
- Maker / attribution
- Thomas Tompion (maker)
- Date
- 1676
- Historical period
- Early Modern Horology (1600 – 1750)
- Country of origin
- England
- Object type
- Year-going clock
- Holding institution
- Royal Museums Greenwich
- Accession / object no.
- ZAA0885
- Credit line
- National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London. Acquired with the assistance of The Art Fund, National Heritage Memorial Fund, Friends of NMM, Save & Prosper Educational Trust, The Worshipful Company of Clockmakers, J Paul Getty Charitable Trust, The Monument Trust, Christie's, Peter Moores Foundation
- Catalogue title (original)
- Year-Going Clock (English)
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Record summary
Held and catalogued by Royal Museums Greenwich (object number ZAA0885), this is a year-going clock by Thomas Tompion, made in England, dated 1676. The Atlas places it in the Early Modern Horology period (1600 – 1750) of its Clocks collection. The record is illustrated with 3 photographs.
Assembled from the source record's structured fields. Dates and attributions are given as the source states them; where a field is missing the Atlas leaves it blank rather than estimating.
Catalogue description
Catalogue description — Royal Museums Greenwich
Year-going clock by Thomas Tompion, 1676 This is one of two clocks especially commissioned by Sir Jonas Moore, Master of Ordnance and patron to the first Astronomer Royal, John Flamsteed, for use at the Royal Observatory from its opening in 1676. The weight-driven clock was originally fitted with a 13 foot pendulum that was suspended behind the wainscot in the north-eastern corner of the Great Room. The clock offered unprecedented accuracy and allowed Flamsteed to determine that the speed of the Earth’s rotation was constant. This proof was fundamental to the work at the Observatory in providing an accurate method of determining Longitude at sea. Following Flamsteed’s death in 1719, the clock was sold by his Widow, Margaret and was subsequently converted for use as a domestic clock. After a 275 year absence the clock was purchased by the Museum and is now displayed in the Octagon Room (formerly known as the Great Room) at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich.
Historical context
Early Modern Horology (1600 – 1750)
Huygens' pendulum and balance spring transform accuracy; English makers develop the anchor and deadbeat escapements.
Huygens's pendulum (1656–57) improved clock accuracy from about a quarter of an hour to under a minute a day. The anchor escapement (c. 1670) and the long seconds pendulum created the longcase clock; London makers such as Fromanteel, Knibb, Tompion and Quare led European clockmaking, and French makers created the Boulle pendule.
Read the period in the timelineMore clocks from this periodEarlier: Renaissance Horology
Atlas type guide
Domestic clocks
A clock combines four systems: a source of power (falling weight, coiled spring, or later electricity), a gear train that divides time, an escapement and oscillator that regulate it (foliot, pendulum or balance), and an indicating system of dial and hands or a bell. Its history runs from the large iron weight-driven clocks of the late thirteenth century to Renaissance spring-driven table clocks, the pendulum revolution of 1656, the factory clocks of the nineteenth century and electric and quartz clocks of the twentieth.
Domestic clocks also reflect regional furniture and decorative traditions — English longcase and bracket clocks, French pendules, Viennese regulators, Black Forest and American shelf clocks — and therefore record changing tastes as much as technical progress.
What to look for
- How the clock is powered: weights, spring barrel, fusee, electric coil.
- The oscillator: foliot, short pendulum, long seconds pendulum or balance.
- Whether it strikes: hour only (count wheel) or hours and quarters (rack striking).
- The maker or retailer's name on dial and movement, and any factory trademarks.
- Signs of alteration — replaced dials, converted escapements, 'married' cases.
Dating clues
- Before 1656 clocks used foliots or balances; after, most domestic clocks have pendulums.
- Anchor escapements spread after c. 1670; minute hands became common at the same time.
- Factory production in America and Germany transformed prices after c. 1840.
General guidance written by the Atlas editors about this kind of object. It is not a statement about this particular piece; for that, rely on the source record above and on physical examination.
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