Clock Tower, Palace of Westminster
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"Big Ben" redirects here. For other uses, see Big Ben (disambiguation).
The Clock Tower is a turret clock structure at the north-eastern end of the Houses of Parliament building in Westminster, London. It is colloquially and popularly known as Big Ben, however this name actually belongs to the clock's main bell. The tower has also been incorrectly referred to as St. Stephen's Tower.
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[edit] Structure
The tower was raised as a part of Charles Barry's design of a new palace, after the old Palace of Westminster was destroyed by fire on the night of October 16, 1834. The tower is designed in the Victorian Gothic style, and is 96.3 metres (316 feet) high.
The first 61 metres (200 feet) of the structure is the clock tower, consisting of brickwork with stone cladding; the remainder of the tower's height is a framed spire of cast iron. The tower is founded on a 15 by 15 metres (49 by 49 feet) raft, made of 3 metres (9 feet) thick concrete, at a depth of 7 metres (23 feet) below ground level. The tower has an estimated weight of 8,667 tonnes (9,553 tons). The four clock faces are 55 metres (180 feet) above ground.
Due to ground conditions present since construction, the tower leans slightly to the north-west, by roughly 220 millimetres (8.66 inches). Due to thermal effects it oscillates annually by a few millimetres east and west. [1]
[edit] Clock faces
The Clock Faces were once large enough to allow the Clock Tower to be the largest four-faced clock in the world, but has since been outdone by the Allen-Bradley Clock Tower in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The builders of the Allen-Bradley Clock Tower did not add chimes to the clock, so Big Ben still holds the title of the "World's largest four-faced chiming clock". The clock mechanism itself was completed by 1854, but the tower was not fully constructed until four years later in 1858.
The clock faces and dials were designed by Augustus Pugin. The clock faces are set in an iron framework 7 metres (21 feet) in diameter supporting 576 pieces of opal glass, rather like a stained glass window. Some of the glass pieces may be removed for inspection of the hands. The surround of the dials is heavily gilded. At the base of each clock face in gilt letters is the Latin inscription 'DOMINE SALVAM FAC REGINAM NOSTRAM VICTORIAM PRIMAM' meaning 'Lord save our Queen Victoria I'. The name Big Ben was first given to a 14.5-tonne (16-ton) hour bell, cast in 1856. The bell was never officially named, but the legend on it records that the commissioner of works, Sir Benjamin Hall, who was responsible for the order. Since the tower was not yet finished, the bell was mounted in New Palace Yard but the bell cracked under the striking hammer, and its metal was recast as the 12.5 tonne (13.8 ton) bell which is in use today. The new bell was mounted in the tower in 1908 alongside four quarter-hour bells.
The clock became operational on September 7, 1859.
During World War II, the Palace of Westminster was hit by German bombing, destroying the House of Commons and causing damage to the tower's western clockface.
[edit] The main bell
Big Ben, officially known as the Great Bell of Westminster, is the largest bell in the tower and part of the Great Clock of Westminster. The Great Bell chimes E, weighs 13 metric tonnes and is 2.2 metres high. It was cast on Saturday April 10, 1856 in Stockton-on-Tees by George Mears. After the casting the bell was given a test ring and it broke in half, resulting in it being recast at the Whitechapel Bell Foundry. With the bell recast it was installed into the clock tower, but once again a crack formed. To prevent further damage to the bell it was rotated and the main hammer was reduced in weight.
The exact origin of the name 'Big Ben' has remained a popular mystery, leading to speculation that suggests the bell was named after heavyweight boxer Benjamin Caunt who was popular at the time, however an alternate theory that has been supported cites the origin of the name as belonging to Sir Benjamin Hall who was the Parliamentary Commissioner of Works.
The BBC first broadcast the chimes on 31 December 1923 - there is a microphone in the turret connected to Broadcasting House.
[edit] Other bells
Along with the main bell, the belfry houses four quarter bells which play the Westminster Quarters, derived from Handel's Messiah, on the quarter hours. The four quarter bells are G sharp, F sharp, E, and B. They play a 20 chime sequence, 1-4 at quarter past, 5-12 at half past, 13-20,1-4 at quarter to, and 5-20 on the hour. The chimes are also set to words, "All through this hour, Lord be my Guide, And by thy power, no foot shall slide".
[edit] Similar turret clocks
A 6 metre (20 foot) metal replica of the clock tower, known as Little Ben, complete with working clock, stands on a traffic island close to Victoria Station. Several turret clocks around the world are inspired by the look of the Great Clock, including the clock tower of the Gare de Lyon in Paris and the Peace Tower of the Parliament of Canada in Ottawa.
A clock tower similar to Big Ben is the Chamberlain Tower of the University of Birmingham, England. Often referred to as "Old Tom" or "Old Joe", it is around three quarters of the size of Big Ben. Its four faces are each seventeen feet in diameter.
Baby Big Ben is the Welsh version of Big Ben at the Pierhead in Cardiff. Its mechanism is almost identical to the one which powers the Big Ben clock in London. [2]
[edit] Reliability
The clock is famous for its reliability. This is due to the skill of its designer, the lawyer and amateur horologist Edmund Beckett Denison, later Lord Grimthorpe. As the clock mechanism, created to Denison's specification by clockmaker Edward John Dent, was completed before the tower itself was finished, Denison had time to experiment. Instead of using the deadbeat escapement and remontoire as originally designed, Denison invented the double three-legged gravity escapement. This escapement provides the best separation between pendulum and clock mechanism. Together with an enclosed, wind-proof box sunk beneath the clockroom, the Great Clock's pendulum is well isolated from external factors like snow, ice and pigeons on the clock hands, and keeps remarkably accurate time.
The idiom of putting a penny on, with the meaning of slowing down, sprung from the method of fine-tuning the clock's pendulum by adding or subtracting penny coins. Even to this day, old pennies, phased out of British currency by the 1971 decimalisation, are used.
Despite heavy bombing the clock ran accurately throughout the Blitz. It slowed down on New Year's Eve 1962 due to heavy snow, causing it to chime in the new year 10 minutes late.
The clock had its first and only major breakdown in 1976. The chiming mechanism broke due to metal fatigue on 5 August 1976, and was reactivated again on 9 May 1977. During this time BBC Radio 4 had to make do with the pips.
It stopped on 30 April 1997, the day before the general election, and again three weeks later.
On Friday, 27 May 2005 the clock stopped ticking for 90 minutes from 10.07pm, possibly due to hot weather (temperatures in London had reached an unseasonal 31.8ºC/90ºF). It resumed keeping time, but stalled again at 10.20 p.m. and remained still for about 90 minutes before starting up again. [3]
On 29 October 2005, the mechanism was stopped for approximately 33 hours so that the clock and its chimes could be worked on. It was the lengthiest maintenance shutdown in 22 years. [4]
In 2005, a terrorist manual was found in the home of Abu Hamza al-Masri, marking Big Ben, The Statue of Liberty and the Eiffel Tower as terrorist targets. In his trial at The Old Bailey in 2006 he denied all knowledge of them being targets.
Big Ben's "Quarter Bells" were taken out of commission for four weeks starting at 0700 hrs GMT on 5 June 2006 [5], as a bearing holding one of the quarter bells was damaged from many years of wear and needed to be removed for repairs. During this period, BBC Radio 4 broadcast recordings of British bird song followed by the pips in place of the usual chimes. [6]
[edit] Culture
Big Ben is a 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. Similarly, on Remembrance Day, the chimes of Big Ben are broadcast to mark the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month and the start of two minutes' silence.
For many years ITN's "News at Ten" began with an opening sequence which featured Big Ben with the chimes punctuating the announcement of the news headlines. The Big Ben chimes are still used today during the headlines and all ITV News bulletins use a graphic based on the Westminster clock face. Big Ben can also be heard striking the hour before some news bulletins on BBC Radio 4 (6pm and midnight, plus 10pm on Sundays) and the BBC World Service, a practice that began on December 31, 1923. The chimes are transmitted live via a microphone permanently installed in the tower and connected by line to Broadcasting House.
Big Ben can be used in the classroom to demonstrate the difference between the speed of light and the speed of sound. If a person visits London and stands at the bottom of the clock tower, they will hear the chimes of Big Ben approximately 1/6 of a second later than the bell being struck (assuming a bell height of 55 metres). However, using a microphone placed near the bell and transmitting the sound to a far away destination by radio (for instance New York or Hong Kong), that location will hear the bell long before you do on the ground. In fact, if the recipient were to echo the sound back to the observer on the ground, the bell would be heard on the radio before the natural sound reached the observer. (Example: New York is 5,562 kilometres (3456 miles) from London, and radio waves will reach New York in 0.018552 seconds; round trip is 0.037105 seconds, compared to 0.1616 seconds for the natural sound to reach the ground)
An image of the clock tower was also used as the logo for London Films.
[edit] Cultural references
[edit] A cultural cliché
The clock has become a visual symbol for the United Kingdom and London, particularly in the visual media. When a television or film-maker wishes to quickly convey to a non-UK audience a generic location in Britain, a popular way to do so is to show an image of Big Ben, often with a Routemaster bus or Hackney carriage in the foreground. This gambit is less often used in the United Kingdom itself, as it would suggest to most British people a specific location in London, which may not be the intention.
The sound of the clock chiming has also been used this way in audio media, but as the Westminster Quarters are heard from many other clocks and other devices, the unique nature of this particular sound has been considerably diluted.
[edit] Examples
- The structure has been shown in films such as The Thirty Nine Steps, V for Vendetta, Shanghai Knights, Basil, The Great Mouse Detective, Independence Day, My Learned Friend, Mars Attacks, National Lampoon's European Vacation, The Avengers, Gorgo, Peter Pan, The War of the Worlds, and Over the Hedge. It has also been shown in various television shows such as Futurama, The Simpsons, Doctor Who (particularly in The Dalek Invasion of Earth, Aliens of London, The Empty Child and The Christmas Invasion) and Captain Scarlet.
- The sound has been featured in many plays such as Stephen Sondheim musical Sweeney Todd, first heard as the title character arrives back into a London port and recurring throughout the piece, helping to maintain a sense of location.
- The clocktower has appeared in Kingdom Hearts, part of the level relating to Disney's adaptation of J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan.
- In the Yu-Gi-Oh! Trading Card Game, the design of the Clock Tower Prison card is based on the tower.
- In the James Bond Computer Game James Bond 007: From Russia with Love Big Ben features primarily at the end of the first level.
- In the James Bond film Thunderball, Ernst Stavro Blofeld tells MI6 to have Big Ben ring seven times at six o'clock as an agreement to SPECTRE's terms.
- Users of the first edition of the computer game "Command & Conquer" had the option of destroying Big Ben - among other international landmarks - seen in a digital video.
[edit] External links
- Big Ben Webcam, Houses of Parliament, London, UK
- Big Ben photo gallery
- Explore Parliament
- Whitechapel Bell Foundry on Big Ben
- Factsheet from Palace of Westminster (includes details on The Great Clock)
- Big Ben
- Innovative engineering to control Big Ben's tilt - A technical paper from Cambridge University
- Skyscrapernews detail on Big Ben
- Big Ben widget for Opera
- Big Ben Clock widget on Yahoo! widgets
- Aerial view at Google Local
- Notes and Images on 1976 repairs
