COIN CONTROLS BIG BEN
HALFPENNY RESTORES ACCURACY.
It vafi revealed recently by Sir Frank Dyson, the Astronomer Royal, that, far from having ponderous mechanism, Big Ben, the great clock about the Houses of Parliament, responds to slightest touch.
"Whenever the clock is losing slightly a halfpenny or penny is placed on a tray fixed about halfway down the pendulum,” Sir Frank explained. ‘‘lf the clock is gaining, the halfpenny is removed.” Big Elen never strays far from accuracy. During the past year it was compared on 288 days with the Greenwich Observatory, and on only twentyone days did the error reach more than 1 second, the maximum deviation liein'g 1.4 seconds. As it takes a fifth of a second for the booming of Big Ben to reach the street and two seconds to reach Trafalgar Square, only a few hundred yards away, Sir Frank believes "the limits of reasonable accuracy” have been readied.
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Hokitika Guardian, 31 July 1930, Page 8
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153COIN CONTROLS BIG BEN Hokitika Guardian, 31 July 1930, Page 8
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