Manual labor hoists the great hour bell into place in the Houses of Parliament in London. People are already calling the 14.33-ton bell Big Ben.
Fire destroyed most of the ancient Palace of Westminster in 1834. The giant tower of the rebuilt neo-Gothic Houses of Parliament was to have a giant clock (with a twenty-three-foot-diameter face on each side of the tower) and a giant bell. The clock—with fourteen-foot minute hands—was ready in 1854, but the 314-foot-high tower wasn’t.
The first bell cracked when they tested it. The bell was broken up, and the pieces taken to East London’s Whitechapel Bell Foundry (birthplace of Philadelphia’s Liberty Bell). The metal was melted down and poured into a new mold on April 10, 1858. Once the bell arrived at Westminster, it took eight men eighteen hours to raise it into place. They turned a giant windlass hauling an 1,800-foot chain over huge drums. Guide wheels ran along restraining timbers inside the tower to steady the bell’s cradle.
After Big Ben was hung in the belfry, the clockworks could finally be installed below it. The bell first rang the hours on May 31, 1859, and officially entered service in July. In September, it cracked. A lawyer on the committee had insisted on a bell hammer twice the weight recommended by the foundry. Big Ben got a lighter hammer in 1862 and was rotated an eighth of a turn so the hammer would hit a different spot. The crack remains, giving the bell its distinctive tone.
Big Ben is probably named for “Big Ben” Caunt, a famous 238-pound professional boxer. His nickname was a catchphrase for the biggest of any particular category. Striking the bell has been controlled by electric motor since 1912, but the clock itself is still hand-wound thrice weekly.—RA