Straddling the 17th and 18th centuries, the city of London was a bubbling cauldron of scientific ambition and desire for innovation, particularly in the field of horology. It was there that George Graham was able to give free rein to his immense talent as a watchmaker, offering the world his high-precision timekeeping mechanisms. Generous and altruistic, the man affectionately called “Honest George” wanted neither money nor fame: his eyes were only for the advancement of science and the benefits it could bring to humanity.
George Graham: The Mechanics of the Heart
George Graham’s life is inseparable from that of the man who was his mentor and friend, Thomas Tompion. First a collaborator of Tompion from 1695, Graham later became his partner (around 1711) before succeeding him after the master’s death. By marrying one of his mentor’s nieces, Elizabeth, in 1696, he also became a member of the family. Their professional and personal relationship was so intimate and strong that upon his death, Graham was buried alongside Tompion in Westminster Abbey, an honor traditionally reserved for persons of high birth.
Did Graham find in Tompion a substitute father? In any case, it was after his own father’s death that he left his hometown of Kirklinton, where he was born on July 7, 1673, into a Quaker family. At 15, having arrived in London, he became an apprentice to Henry Aske for seven years. His work was so impressive that it attracted the attention of the famous Thomas Tompion, a great watchmaker who had made his name through the manufacture of serial-numbered watches. Graham joined him in 1695, thus beginning a long history of collaboration and friendship. The young man benefited both from his mentor’s influence and from the exceptional context of the city of London at that time—the place to be for anyone interested in timekeeping mechanisms.
When Tompion died in 1713, he entrusted Graham, by will, with the reins of his business. Completely free in his movements, Graham effectively combined his taste for innovation and his precision watchmaking technique to improve existing mechanisms (such as the cylinder escapement) and create his own innovations—thus, in 1715, the dead-beat anchor escapement, and in 1726 the mercury pendulum. His keen interest in astronomy also led him to design precision instruments in this field, notably the “astronomical sector” still visible at the Greenwich Observatory.
But for George Graham, clocks were not an end in themselves. The man was driven by a powerful mechanics of the heart, which made him one of the most generous and altruistic scientists of his time. Not only did he not seek to profit from his inventions, to which he left total free access, but he also participated in financing the young talents around him. Thus, the very day he was introduced to John Harrison, after several hours discussing clocks and pendulums, Graham concluded this first meeting by granting his young colleague an interest-free loan so that he could continue his research toward the development of the H1 marine chronometer. Subsequently, he did not hesitate to introduce Harrison to the Board of Longitude and to request additional financial support for him.
Buried in the same tomb as his friend and mentor Thomas Tompion, at Westminster, after his death on November 16, 1751, Graham would become a reference name in the history of horology.
His Inventions
Few in number, the inventions attributed to George Graham were nevertheless decisive.
- 1715: invention of the dead-beat anchor escapement for pendulum clocks, known as the “Graham escapement.” This escapement is still used in high-precision clocks.
- 1725: refinement of the cylinder escapement. This escapement, the first cylinder escapement in history, is sometimes wrongly attributed to Graham. In reality, he “only” improved it and integrated it into one of his clocks in 1715, but it was Thomas Tompion who developed it and used it in a clock made for Jonas Moore, as well as in two regulators built for the Greenwich Observatory. From 1726 onward, it equipped all watches manufactured by Graham.
- 1726: invention of the mercury pendulum, known as the “Graham pendulum.” It reduced the effects of temperature variations. The extreme degree of precision achieved by this mechanism, when combined with the Graham escapement, gave these clocks the name “regulators.” Only invar, developed by Charles Édouard Guillaume in 1895, would surpass the precision of the mercury pendulum.