Big Ben: Encyclopedia - Big Ben

Big Ben

Big Ben is the colloquial name of the Clock Tower of the Palace of Westminster in London, and an informal name for the Great Bell of Westminster, the largest bell in the tower and part of the Great Clock of Westminster.

The clock tower is at the north-western end of the building, the home of the Houses of Parliament, and contains the famous striking clock and bell.

Big Ben - Naming

Big Ben is the most commonly used name for the Clock Tower but it is actually the bell that is called Big Ben. (See synecdoche) One theory says that the bell is named after Sir Benjamin Hall, the Chief Commissioner of Works. Another theory suggests that at the time anything which was heaviest of its kind was called "Big Ben" after the then-famous prizefighter Benjamin Caunt, making it a natural name for the bell.

The tower is also sometimes referred to as St Stephen's Tower, though this name is not used by staff at the Palace of Westminster, including those who work within the tower itself. This name might originate from St Stephen's Hall, the western wing of the Palace of Westminster, which is the entrance used by visitors wishing to view the proceedings of the Houses of Parliament, and British subjects wishing to lobby their MP.

Big Ben - History and construction

Big Ben - The Clock Tower

The tower was raised as a part of Charles Barry's design of a new palace, after the old Palace of Westminster was destroyed by fire on the night of October 16, 1834. The tower is designed in the Victorian Gothic style, and is 96.3 m (316 ft) high.

The 61 m (200 ft) tower consists of brickwork with stone cladding; the remainder of the tower's height is accounted for by a framed spire of cast iron. The tower is founded on a 15 by 15 m (49 by 49 ft) raft, made of 3 m (9 ft) thick concrete, at a depth of 7 m (23 ft) below ground level. The tower has an estimated weight of 8,667 t. The four clock faces are 55 m (180 ft) above ground.

Due to ground conditions present since construction, the tower leans slightly to the north-west, by roughly 220 mm. It also oscillates annually by a few millimetres east and west, due to thermal effects. [1]

Big Ben - The clock and its faces

The clock in the tower was once the biggest in the world, able to strike the first blow for each hour with an accuracy of one second. The clock mechanism was completed by 1854, but the tower was not fully constructed until four years later.

The clock faces and dials were designed by Augustus Pugin. It is an iron framework 23 feet in diameter supporting 312 pieces of opal glass, rather like a stained glass window. Some of the glass pieces may be removed for inspection of the hands. The surround of the dials is heavly gilded. At the base of each clock face in gilt letters is the Latin inscription 'DOMINE SALVAM FAC REGINAM NOSTRAM VICTORIAM PRIMAM' which means 'Lord save our Queen Victoria I'.

The name Big Ben was first given to a 16-ton hour bell, cast in 1856. Since the tower was not yet finished, the bell was mounted in New Palace Yard but the bell cracked under the striking hammer, and its metal was recast as the 13.8 ton bell which is in use today. The new bell was mounted in the tower in 1858 alongside four quarter-hour bells.

On September 7, 1859, the clock became fully operational. Less than a month later, the hour bell developed a crack due to the strain of being struck repeatedly by the hammer (the same hammer which broke its predecessor). For two years, the largest of the quarter bells was used as a substitute. Then the hour bell was rotated so that the hammer no longer came into contact with the cracked surface, and the bell became operational again in 1862.

The mechanisms of the clock and chimes have been overhauled several times since then.

Big Ben - The Great Bell of Westminster

The bell weighs 13.762 t (13 tons 10 cwt 99 lb or 30,339 lb), with a striking hammer weighing 203 kg (4 cwt), and was originally tuned to E. There is delay of 5 seconds between strikes. It is a common misconception that Big Ben is the heaviest bell in Britain. In fact, it is the third heaviest, the second heaviest being Great George found at Liverpool Cathedral at 14 tons 15 cwt 2 qtr 2 lb (33,098 lb or 15.013 t) and the heaviest being Great Paul found at St Paul's Cathedral at 16 tons 14 cwt 2 qtr 19 lb (37,483 lb or 17.002 t).

The original tower designs demanded a 14-ton bell to be struck with a 6-cwt (300-kg) hammer. A bell was produced by John Warner and Sons in Stockton-on-Tees in 1856, weighing 16 tons. However, this cracked under test in the Palace Yard. The contract for the bell was then given to the Whitechapel Bell Foundry, who in 1858 re-cast the bell into the 13.8 t bell used today. It too started to crack under the hammer, and a legal battle arose. After two years of having the Great Bell out of commission, the 6 cwt (300 kg) hammer was replaced with a 4 cwt (200 kg) hammer, and the bell itself was turned 90° so the crack would not develop any further, and it came back into use in 1862. However, the crack, now filled, and the turn meant that it no longer struck a true E.

The tongue of the bell was forged at Hopper's foundry, Houghton-le-Spring, Tyne and Wear in 1858.

Big Ben - Other bells

Along with the main bell, the belfry houses four quarter bells which play the Westminster Quarters, derived from Handel's Messiah, on the quarter hours. The C note in the chime is repeated twice in quick succession, faster than the chiming train can draw back the hammers, so the C bell uses two separate hammers.

Big Ben - Similar turret clocks

A 20 foot (6 m) metal replica of the clock tower, known as Little Ben, complete with working clock, stands on a traffic island close to Victoria Station. Several turret clocks around the world are inspired by the look of the Great Clock, including the clock tower of the Gare de Lyon in Paris and the Peace Tower of the Parliament of Canada in Ottawa.

Big Ben - Reliability

The clock is famous for its reliability. This is due to the skill of its designer, the lawyer and amateur horologist Edmund Beckett Denison, later Lord Grimthorpe. As the clock mechanism, created to Denison's specification by clockmaker Edward John Dent, was completed before the tower itself was finished, Denison had time to experiment. Instead of using the deadbeat escapement and remontoire as originally designed, Denison invented the double three-legged gravity escapement. This escapement provides the best separation between pendulum and clock mechanism. Together with an enclosed, wind-proof box sunk beneath the clockroom, the Great Clock's pendulum is well isolated from external factors like snow, ice and pigeons on the clock hands, and keeps remarkably accurate time.

The idiom of putting a penny on, with the meaning of slowing down, sprung from the method of fine-tuning the clock's pendulum by adding or subtracting penny coins. Even to this day, old pennies, phased out of British currency by the 1971 decimalisation, are used.

Despite heavy bombing, it ran accurately throughout The Blitz. It slowed down on New Year's Eve 1962 due to heavy snow, causing it to chime in the new year 10 minutes late.

The clock had its first and only major breakdown in 1976. The chiming mechanism broke due to metal fatigue on 5 August 1976, and was reactivated again on 9 May 1977. During this time BBC Radio 4 had to make do with the pips.

It stopped on 30 April 1997, the day before the general election, and again three weeks later.

On Friday, 27 May 2005 the clock stopped ticking for 90 minutes from 10.07pm, possibly due to hot weather (temperatures in London had reached an unseasonal 31.8°C/90°F). It resumed keeping time, but stalled again at 10.20 p.m. and remained still for about 90 minutes before starting up again. [2]

On 29 October 2005, Big Ben was stopped for approximately 33 hours so that the clock and its chimes could be worked on. It was the lengthiest maintenance shutdown in 22 years.

Big Ben - Culture

Big Ben is a focus of New Year celebrations in England, with radio and TV stations tuning to its chimes to welcome the start of the year. Similarly, on Remembrance Day, the chimes of Big Ben are broadcast to mark the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month and the start of two minutes' silence.

For many years ITN's "News at Ten" began with an opening sequence which featured Big Ben with the chimes punctuating the announcement of the news headlines. The Big Ben chimes are still used today during the headlines and all ITV1 and ITV News Channel bulletins use a graphic based on the Westminster clock face. Big Ben can also be heard striking the hour before some news bulletins on BBC Radio 4 (currently 6pm and midnight, plus 10pm on Sundays) and the BBC World Service, a practice that began on December 31, 1923. The chimes are transmitted live via a microphone permanently installed in the tower and connected by line to Broadcasting House.

Big Ben is often used in the Physics classroom to demonstrate the difference between the speed of light and the speed of sound for British children. Specifically, if you were to visit London and stand at the bottom of the clock tower, you will hear the chimes of Big Ben approximately 1/6 of a second later than the bell being struck (assuming a bell height of 55 metres). However, using a microphone placed near the bell and transmitting the sound to a far away destination by radio (for instance New York or Hong Kong), that location will hear the bell long before you do on the ground. In fact, if the recipient were to echo the sound back to the observer on the ground, the bell would be heard on the radio before the natural sound reached you. (Example: New York is 3456 miles from London, and radio waves will reach New York in 0.018552 seconds; round trip is 0.037105 seconds, compared to 0.1616 seconds for the natural sound to reach the ground)

Big Ben - Fiction

• The clock features in John Buchan's spy novel The Thirty-Nine Steps and makes for a memorable climax in Don Sharp's 1978 film version, although not in Alfred Hitchcock's 1935 original adaptation. A similar scene is recreated in the 2003 film, Shanghai Knights which culminates with Jackie Chan hanging from the hands of the clock.

• In the monster movie Gorgo, the mother monster destroys the tower.

• The tower is featured several times during the 2005 series of Doctor Who. It is destroyed in Aliens of London by a spacecraft that crashes into the River Thames; seen during the Blitz in The Empty Child; and is seen being rebuilt in The Christmas Invasion.

• Individual clock faces were stolen by the evil Doctor Dredd in The Drac Pack, and a Jack and the Beanstalk style giant, who used it for his cuckoo clock (Secret Squirrel). The whole tower was stolen by the snake-witch Messina in Freddie as FRO7

• The clock also features in the climax of the animated film Basil, The Great Mouse Detective.

• An earlier film climax on the clock face of Big Ben appears in Will Hay's 1943 film My Learned Friend, although the scene is more slapstick than thriller.

Big Ben - Gallery

The Great Clock of Westminster (1)

The Great Clock of Westminster (2)

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Big Ben", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki