FAMOUS BIG BEN

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 89, 9 January 1935, Page 6

FAMOUS BIG BEN

Chimes Link the Empire

THE WORLD’S TIMEKEEPER

•‘Big Ben,” the great clock of the Palace of Westminster, has become almost a universal public timekeeper. Its r-hlming, thanks to tLe British Broadcasting Corporation, is now beard every day throughout the greater part of the world. It has more than fulfilled .the prophecy of its maker. E. J. Dent, who in 1854 said the- clock wornd be a national monument ot finished mechanism and accurate performance. He did not live to see its completion, the work being finished by P. Dent. The clock was fixed in Westminster Tower in 1859 It is the most powerful and accurate striking clock in the world. It is neither synchronised nor controlled (says a writer in “Imperial London”), but automatically reports itself to the Astronomer Royal at the Royal Observatory each day, when its error is checked and noted, and at a certain time each year its rate is published. The Great Bell is named after Sir Benjamin Hall, the First Commissioner of Works at the time it was fixed in the tower. It weighs 13J tons and is struck each hour by a hammer weighing 4cwt. It was one of the conditions laid down that the mechanism should oe so constructed that the first blow of the hour denotes Greenwich time. On only 14 days during the year previous to Its overhaul was the clock more than one second out. ••The crack In Big Ben L only a few inches long It is hardly perceptible and it only penetrates about half the thickness of the bell, which is 9 inches at this particular spot Any attempt at recasting would, of course, remove directly the tone of the bell you all recognise so well.” The mechanism of Big Ben is believed to be the largest in the world, but there are several clocks with bigger dials, or faces. Big Ben has four faces, measuring 22J feet m diameter; the minute spaces are one foot square, the figures two feet long, and the minute hands arc 14 feet long and weigh about two cwt. The dials arc of a very fine opal glass, specially made, and during the 75 years the dials have been lighted by several methods. Prior to 1960 the clock faces were lit. with Bray burners; between 1900 and 1905 experiments were carried out with high pressure gas and incandescent burners; between MJOS and 1906 electric lighting experiments were made with Ncrnst and mercury vapour lamps; from 1906 to the present time electric lighting with ordinary lamps modernised from time io time, and at the present time each dial is lit by means of ten 100-watt gas-filled lamps. The centre of the dials is 180 feet from the ground. The clock itself weighs anont live tons, the weights which drive the clock about 2i tons. The pendulum is 13 feet long and beats two seconds, and it. may be of interest, to know that a penny placed on the pendulum will have the effect of making the dock gain one second in 24 hours. The bob of the pendulum weighs four cwt. Before 1913 it. took two men five hours three times a week to wind (he clock by hand, but in 1913 an electric motor, specially designed, enables the clock to be wound in about 40 minutes three times a week. “There is no doubt that the chiming of this fine old clock brings buck memories and helps to keep the Old Country fresh in the minds of all our kinsmen in every part of the world, both on sea and land.”