BIG BEN

Wairarapa Times-Age, 21 October 1938, Page 6

BIG BEN

WORLD-FAMOUS CLO.C!' CHIMES HEARD IN EVERY COUNTRY. MORE THAN 84 YEARS OLD. At intervals every day a voice rings out from London to the world, speaking a language that men of all nations can understand, telling the passing of the hours —the voice of Big Ben, the great bell that hangs in the clock tower of the Houses of Parliament, at Westminster. The bell that was to sound the hour from the then newly-biult tower was originally cast in 1856. It stood eight feet high, was nine and a half feet in diameter at the mouth, and weighed fifteen tons.

After being transported to Westminster it stood for some months at the foot of the tower, the marvel of all beholders. The bell was struck at intervals to test its soundness, but one day is was found to contain a flaw, owing to which it was scrapped, and a second bell, the present one, was cast at a London bell foundry.

The second Big Ben, which weighs thirteen and a half tons, was hoisted to its eyrie, some 200 feet above the ground, in October, 1958. Officially named “St Steven,” it was soon known by the nickname of “Big Ben,” after Sir Benjamin Hall, the First Commissioner of Works, the official responsible for the care of Government buildings. After a time this bell. too. developed a slight flaw, owing to the clappers being too heavy, but the makers were able to mend it, and Big Ben has given no trouble since. JBIG BEN BR.OAD.CASTS. One cold day in 1923, a small group of the British Broadcasting Corporation’s engineers climbed to the roof of a nearby building and picked up the bell’s voice with a microphone for the first time and a new era in Big Ben’s life had begun. Later a microphone (protected against weather and interference by .pigeons) was installed in the clock tower itself, and Big Ben became a regular broadcaster to listeners at Home. On November 11, 1927, the bell was first heard by oversea listeners through the medium of GSSW, the original short-wave transmitter of the 8.8. C. It would be interesting to know how its original founders would have taken the news that one .day their bell would be heard in every part of the civilised world. And now Big Ben-is to contribute in a new way to the broadcasts in which it plays such an important part—this time .as “hero” of a record of its life, devised .by Jonquil Antony. PERFECT TIME KEEPER. It is a common error to apply the bell’s name to its parent clock, the ; most accurate as well as the biggest and most powerful striking clock in the world—it keeps time so perfectly that some listeners believe it to be automatically controlled from Greenwich Observatory. Actually the clock is not controlled or synchronised in any way yet official records prove that it varies hardly more than a second either way throughout the year. Although it is fifteen .feet long :and weighs five tons, so perfect is the-ad-justment that if a penny is placed on the two-hundred-weight bob of the pendulum, the clock .will gain four tenths of a second in 24 hours. The materials used in the clock’s construction were of such excellence that, when the mechanism was overhauled about four .years .ago, no replacements .were needed. .'Every part is original, just as it was made more than .84 years ago.