It has its own Twitter tweets the relevant number of bongs on the hour, every hour. Three of the coins were replaced for the London 2012 Olympics. Removing or adding a penny changes the clock's accuracy by two fifths of a second per day. It's kept accurate by some copper (pre-decimal) penny weights on the clock mechanism. When it was made, the clock was the most accurate in the world. Once this one was complete, it took 32 hours to winch it up the tower on its side. ![]() That bell was sent to Whitechapel Bell Foundry in pieces and melted down to create the new 13.5 tonne bell. It was working fine until the man who designed it, Edmund Beckett Denison, decided he wanted it louder so added a much larger hammer. For several months, the bell was tested outside the tower. A 16.5 tonne bell was created and delivered to London before the clock tower was ready. Originally, the contract to create the bell went to a company called Warners of Norton in Stockton-on-Tees. The bell was famously cast at Whitechapel Bell Foundry - but that's not the whole story. Photo: Andres Balcazar That bell wasn't even the original bell A lighter hammer was fitted, and the bell was rotated slightly so that the hammer no longer hits the cracked section. The damage was done - and the bell remains flawed to this day. The hammer that was installed with it was roughly twice the size it should have been for a bell of that size. Just two months after the bell first went into service in 1859, it was cracked. There's even a pub named after him in Northampton. He was kept in the prison room overnight. It was last used in 1880 when newly elected MP Charles Bradlaugh, an atheist, refused to swear allegiance to Queen Victoria on the bible. ![]() Photo: Anna Potyondi There's a prison insideĪ third of the way (or 114 steps) up inside the tower is the Prison Room, where MPs in breach of codes of conduct were imprisoned. When they resume, assuming the long-standing system still operates, you'll need to contact your MP's office to sort it out for you. Tours are suspended until 2020 while refurbishment work takes place. The four quarter bells are smaller, with different dimensions to enable them to hit different notes. The main bell weighs 13.7 tonnes and is 2.7m in diameter. The minute hand on each clock face is 4.2 metres long, and the hour hand is 2.7 meters long. The Elizabeth Tower has 334 steps over 11 floors up to the belfry (or 399 to the lantern).Įach clock face has a 7m diameter. Watching him fight was a common pastime among MPs of the day, and he retired two years before the bell was installed. ![]() Heavyweight boxer Benjamin Caunt is another contender. One idea is that it was named after MP Benjamin Hall, rumoured to have been a fairly round chap, and responsible for overseeing the latter stages of the rebuilding of the Houses of Parliament, including the installation of the bell. There are several theories as to who the eponymous sizeable Benjamin could have been, but none were documented well enough to be proven right. Now we've got that out of the way, we'll move on. More on that particular brand of pedantry here, but for the remainder of this article, we'll be using 'Big Ben' to refer to the whole package. The clock is simply known as the Great Clock. If you're calling it St Stephen's Tower, you're well over a century behind the times. ![]() The tower is named the Elizabeth Tower (formerly the Clock Tower), a name it was officially given in 2012 to celebrate Queen Elizabeth II's diamond jubilee. Big Ben is the name of the largest bell, and even that's a nickname and not an official one.
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