Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 15:00 — 6.9MB)
Enjoy the story of Big Ben, and how the famous clock came to be, and got its name. Though it seems to have been there for centuries, it was finished and christened in 1859. After the old House of Commons burned down, a new one was commissioned, and was to have a clock with a high degree of accuracy, and other elaborate parameters were to be met.
In 1851 clock makers began proposing plans to meet the specifications, but resignations, deaths, and other delays caused setbacks. Then there was the problem of casting the 14 ton bell. In 1858 the bell was finally installed as the crowning achievement, but now the clock mechanism refused to work. Can things get any worse? The bugs were finally worked out, but the politicians couldn’t agree on a name for the clock.
Arguements over what to name the clock raged. Serious attempts at nameing it were tossed aside, and almost as a joke, it was named Big Ben after a particularly blustery politician, Sir Benjamin Hull. Problems weren’t quite over, but things managed to work out. Listen and learn how the clock is wound, and how technology has made some improvements.
