Posted on 08/11/2007 9:25:14 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
LONDON - Big Ben's bongs fell silent Saturday as workers rappelled down Parliament's iconic clock tower, beginning a month of maintenance work on the clock and its world-famous bell.
Time briefly stood still as the clock's hands were frozen shortly after 8 a.m. They then were wound to 12 o'clock as a team of specialist "industrial rope-access technicians" descended to clean the clock's four latticework faces, part of maintenance ahead of its 150th anniversary in 2009.
Although the clock soon will be ticking again, the famed bell that sounds the hour at Britain's Houses of Parliament will be silent for four to six weeks as engineers replace bearings in the clock mechanism.
This is the first time since 1956 that both Big Ben's sonorous hourly bongs and the chimes that mark each quarter-hour will be silent, robbing London of one of its most distinctive sounds.
Parliament's neo-Gothic clock tower, designed by Charles Barry, is popularly known as Big Ben, although the name refers only to the 13.5 ton Great Bell inside.
Cast at the Whitechapel Foundry in east London, Big Ben first rang out in July 1859. Soon after, it cracked — as an earlier version had during testing. Officials simply turned the bell so the hammer wouldn't strike the crack. That same bell, crack and all, remains in use.
Big Ben and the clock: http://www.parliament.uk/about/history/big_ben.cfm
SMOKIN’!!!!!!!!..................
Chong’s Bongs?...............
Duuuuude. . . . . . .
Big Ben will be fitted with loud speakers ... and only be used five times a day to call the mohammedans to pray. An end to an era and an end to civilization.
No idea, but I thought the ? mark for this thread was a winner
Workmen clean the clock face of St Stephens Tower which houses Big Ben in London Saturday Aug. 11, 2007. Big Ben is losing its bongs — temporarily. The famous bell that sounds the hour at Britain's Houses of Parliament is to fall silent for scheduled repairs for only the fourth time in a century and a half. Officials said the distinctive bongs would strike for the last time at 8 a.m. (0700 GMT) Saturday before four to six weeks of maintenance work on the clock. (AP Photo/Lewis Whyld/PA Wire)
Is that how long it will take to build the minaret?
How long will it take for her, or is Hillary talking?
*barf*
I *don’t* think so.
Ha! That’s very clever. ;o)
Yo Ben, don’t bogart that bell...
Here is a useless piece of trivia, the people of Australia used to hear Big Ben’s chimes before the British did.
Why? Because the ABC microphone that picked up the sound was several feet closer to the bell than the BBC’s hence the Australians got the input a fraction of a second earlier and the delta was bigger than any transmission time difference over the respective broadcast network.
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