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BIG BEN NEARS COMPLETION

23 April 1859

Our readers, we are sure, will be glad to learn that the great clock at Westminster is at least progressing towards completion. In saying this we by no means intend to convey the impression that the clock will soon be going, or that a considerable interval may not yet elapse before it is completed, or even that it will ever be completed at all. In speaking of a subject which has given rise to such endless disputes as this clock, we must guard ourselves, we suppose, against expressing any opinion at all. We only, therefore, announce the fact that Mr. Dent’s workmen have at last begun to do that which should have been done long ago, and that the mechanism of the clock is being put together very slowly in the clock chamber behind the dials. Unquestionably, for a clock whose history now extends over 15 years, and which has been going for nearly three years in Mr. Dent’s factory, it is no great matter to say that after all this time it is at length in course of being sent to the very place for which it was constructed. But, little as this may be in the way of progress, it, at all events, is progress, which is more than we have been able to say of the whole affair any time these two years past. Before the clock will be really in going and striking order, many little difficulties, we believe, have yet to be overcome. One is a contrivance which shall catch the hammer of the great bell the instant it has struck, in order to prevent the rebound again dropping it upon the bell, and lift it clear from the side, that the vibration may not be interfered with. This is, of course, a difficulty which can be overcome, though devising and perfecting the means will require time, especially with a clock of such accurate construction that its striking is guaranteed to be true to a single second. Another difficulty is connected with the arrangements for its being regularly wound. To wind it by hand labour is almost out of the question. This monstrous clock will require winding once in three days, and take 11,500 revolutions of the handle to wind it completely. Supposing two men to be able at such labour to work continuously, and make 800 revolutions of the handle per hour, it would require 14 ½ hours of such exertion every third day. If to this is added the delay caused by the men having to make up the difference caused by the descent of the weights when the clock struck (in striking 12 they descend six feet), it is not too much to estimate the labour at nearly 18 hours, instead of 14 ½; or, to speak generally, about four months of every year would be spent in winding it up. Of course, Mr. Denison will devise some contrivance which will obviate this difficulty, and he can scarcely find a better one than has already been worked out by Mr. James and the indefatigable clerk of the works at the New Houses, Mr. Quarm. By the plan of these gentlemen the clock is made self-winding.


Like many another prestige project, the rebuilding of the Houses of Parliament after they had burned down in 1834 became a long, drawn-out national drama, one reported in ever more exasperated tones by the press.

The clock tower was the last design of Augustus Pugin before his final descent into madness. It took seven years to complete – six fewer than those needed to decide on, and then to construct, the clock it would house.

The accuracy of this was ensured by a revolutionary mechanism, the Grimthorpe Escapement. The clock became known, however, by the catchier name given to the largest of its five bells – Big Ben. This was probably a nod to the government’s First Commissioner of Works, Sir Benjamin Hall.

The clock was started in May 1859 and the first chimes were heard in July. Yet even then, further adjustments were needed. Lighter copper hands were substituted for cast-iron ones to enable the clock to keep time. A lighter clapper had to be made, too, when the original caused the bell to crack. The building has officially been known as the Elizabeth Tower since the Queen’s Jubilee in 2012. (See Decimal Day.)

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