Big Ben
ALTERNATIVE NAME/S: Great Clock of Westminster
DETAILS/DESCRIPTION: Big Ben is the common name for the clock tower of the Houses of Parliament which holds the world’s largest four-faced chiming clock. (‘Big Ben’ is in fact the name of the great 16-ton bell which sounds the hours).
The clock was put in place under the supervision of its designer Sir Edmund Beckett Denison*.
The 180ft-high four clock-faces are each in an iron frame 23ft in diameter, supporting 312 pieces of opal glass. The surrounds of the dial are heavily gilded and below the clock-face is the gilded inscription ‘Domine salvam fac reginam nostram Victoriam primam’ (‘God keep safe our Queen Victoria the First’)
The clock became operational on September 7th 1859.
The clock is famous for its accuracy, achieved by putting a penny on, the method of fine-tuning the clock's pendulum. The pendulum carries a small stack of old penny coins. Adding or subtracting coins has the effect of altering by a tiny amount the position of the pendulum bob's centre of mass and the effective length of the pendulum rod, and therefore the pendulum’s rate of swing. Adding or removing a penny will change the clock speed by 2/5th of one second per day.
ONELINER: Big Ben is nickname for the Great Bell of the Great Clock of Westminster
OTHER CONNECTIONS:
The clock has become a cultural symbol of the United Kingdom, particularly in the visual media. When a television or film-maker wishes to indicate a generic location in the country, a popular way to do so is to show an image of the tower, often with a red double-decker bus or black cab in the foreground.[85]
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Encyclopedia Britannica