Tower of Big Ben

The official name for Big Ben is Elizabeth Tower, which was
raised as part of Charles Barry’s design for a new palace
following a large fire that destroyed the majority of the old
Palace of Westminster in 1834. The new structure was built by
Barry in a neo-gothic style and while he was the chief architect
for the palace, he turned to Augustus Pugin for help designing
the clock tower. The tower was Pugin’s final design before he
eventually descended into madness and death. In April 1858 the
bells of the clock were replaced and in July 1859, the chimes
rang for the first time. In the September of 1859, the great bell
cracked and was subsequently taken out of commission.
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Materials to produce the Elizabeth Tower came from all over the
United Kingdom, with cast iron girders from Regent’s Canal
Ironworks being used. Yorkshire Anston stone and Cornish
granite were used on the exterior and a Birmingham foundry
supplied the Elizabeth Tower’s iron roofing plates. The clock
weighs around 13.5 tons but would be more than twice as heavy
if it had been made of gold.
Big Ben, tower clock, famous for its accuracy and for its massive
bell. Strictly speaking, the name refers to only the great hour
bell, which weighs 15.1 tons (13.7 metric tons), but it is
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commonly associated with the whole clock tower at the northern
end of the Houses of Parliament, in the London borough of
Westminster. The tower itself was formally known as St.
Stephen’s Tower until 2012, when it was renamed Elizabeth
Tower on the occasion of Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee,
celebrating 60 years on the British throne. The hands of the clock
are 9 and 14 feet (2.7 and 4.3 metres) long, respectively, and the
clock tower rises about 320 feet (97.5 metres). Originally in
coordination with the Royal Greenwich Observatory, the chimes
of Big Ben have been broadcast—with a few interruptions—
since 1924 as a daily time signal by the British Broadcasting
Corporation (BBC).
The clock was designed by Edmund Beckett Denison (later Sir
Edmund Beckett and Lord Grimthorpe) in association with Sir
George Airy (then astronomer royal) and the clockmaker Edward
Dent. Denison’s principal contribution was a novel gravity
escapement that imparted unprecedented accuracy to the clock.
In a pendulum clock an escape wheel is allowed to rotate
through the pitch of one tooth for each double swing of the
pendulum and to transmit an impulse to the pendulum to keep it
swinging. An ideal escapement would transmit the impulse
without interfering with the free swing, and the impulse should
be as uniform as possible. The double three-legged gravity
escapement designed by Denison for Big Ben achieves the
second of these but not the first. Big Ben is wound three times a
week, and the winding takes over an hour. Big Ben is accurate to
within two seconds per week. The pendulum is adjusted by
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adding pennies made before the decimalization of the United
Kingdom’s currency in 1971 to the weight. Each penny causes
Big Ben to gain 0.4 second per day.
In 1852 Dent won the commission to make the great clock, but
he died before completing the project, and it was subsequently
finished by his son, Frederick Dent. The clock and bell were
installed together in 1859. The nickname is said by some
historians to stand for Sir Benjamin Hall, the commissioner of
works.
The first casting of the bell had failed; the second casting was
made by George Mears of the Whitechapel Bell Foundry and
was pulled to the tower by a wagon team of 16 horses. Shortly
after it was installed, it too developed a crack and was kept out
of service until its repair in 1862. Denison blamed the crack on
the foundry, which sued him for libel (the case was settled out of
court). For two years during World War I, Big Ben’s bell was
silent to prevent enemy aircraft from using it to hone in on the
Houses of Parliament, and during World War II its clock was not
illuminated for the same reason. In 1934 and 1956 the bell was
restored and repaired. Maintenance work was performed on the
clock in 2007. On August 21, 2017, Big Ben stopped chiming, as
the tower was undergoing a four-year restoration project during
which the bell was scheduled to ring only for special events,
notably New Year’s Eve and Remembrance Sunday.
Big Ben is one of the most famous landmarks in the world. It is
the clock tower. The name Big Ben is often used to describe the
clock tower that is part of the Palace of Westminster.
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Officially "Big Ben" does not refer to the clock tower but instead
to the huge thirteen ton Great Bell located at the top of the 320-
foot-high tower.
The clock tower is now called The Elizabeth Tower. It was
called St Stephen's Tower by Victorian journalists. They referred
to anything to do with the House of Commons as news from 'St
Stephens', as originally MP's used to sit in St Stephen's Hall.
Big Ben is situated on the banks of the River Thames on the
north side of the Houses of Parliament in Westminster, London.
The Big Ben bell has the following measurements:
9'-0" diameter, 7'-6" high, and weighs 13 tons 10 cwts 3 qtrs
15lbs (13,760 Kg)
Big Ben chimes every 15 minutes and the sound can be heard for
a radius of up to 5 miles.
Quick Facts about Big Ben
Big Ben is the world's largest four-faced chiming clock.
The clock became operational on 7th September 1859.
The four faces of the clock are 55 meters above ground.
The clock faces are 23 feet (7m) in diameter.
The hour hand is 9 ft (2.7m) long, and the minute hand is 14 ft
(4.3m) long.
The pendulum is 3.9m long, weighs 300Kg and beats once every
2 seconds.
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At the base of each clock face is a Latin inscription, in gilt
letters. It reads -
“Domine salvam fac Reginam nostrum Victoriam Primam”
"O Lord, keep safe our Queen Victoria the First"
The clock tower is the focus of New Year celebrations in the
United Kingdom, with radio and TV stations tuning to its chimes
to welcome the start of the year.
On Remembrance Day, the chimes of Big Ben are broadcast to
mark the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month.
A light in the clock tower tells when the House of Commons is
in session.

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