London’s Huge Ben on Sunday marks the a hundredth anniversary of its “bongs” to ring within the New Yr being broadcast reside internationally.
Ever since New Yr’s Eve 1923 when BBC engineer A.G. Dryland clambered onto a roof reverse the British parliament to document the strikes, reside transmission has grow to be an annual custom.
The unmistakable sound of the “nation’s timepiece” has lengthy occupied a particular place in nationwide life.
The bongs are heard twice day by day — at 6pm and midnight and 3 times on Sunday — on BBC radio, and initially of the nightly Information at Ten on industrial channel ITV.
Such is their significance that even through the recently-ended five-year restoration programme after they had been largely silenced, vital exceptions
had been made.
In addition to New Yr, Huge Ben additionally continued to mark Armistice Day and Remembrance Sunday when the nation remembers its struggle lifeless.
Huge Ben additionally rang out to mark Britain’s departure from the European Union in 2021 and the state funeral of Queen Elizabeth II in 2022.
After per week of testing, regular service lastly resumed final November.
Whereas the remainder of London is having fun with New Yr’s Eve, clock mechanic Andrew Strangeway shall be on the prime of the 96-metre (315-foot) Elizabeth Tower.
The tower homes the clock and its 5 bells, together with the biggest one from which Huge Ben takes its nickname.
‘Fractions of a second’
Together with the 2 different members of the in-house timekeeping crew, the 37-year-old shall be making final minute checks to verify the clock shall be “inside fractions of a second of being appropriate.”
Though the possibilities of a mishap on the massive night time are tiny, Strangeway stated the clock did undergo a catastrophe through the Nineteen Seventies when it stopped as a consequence of steel fatigue.
“I feel the possibilities of something going significantly incorrect are small. Our primary fear on issues like New Yr is — is it going to go off and is it going to be on time,” he stated.
Accomplished in 1859, the construction was often known as the Clock Tower earlier than being renamed the Elizabeth Tower in 2012 to honour the late queen’s Diamond Jubilee.
Within the years earlier than the renovation, parliament’s timekeepers would benchmark the Nice Clock’s time in opposition to the phone talking clock.
Now, it’s calibrated by GPS through Britain’s Nationwide Bodily Laboratory.
However the technique to regulate the clock’s timing mechanism stays old style: previous pennies are added or faraway from weights hooked up to 2 big coiled springs, to make or lose a second.
“It’s a improbable job,” Strangeway instructed AFP, including that even when he was out and about in London he would steadily search for Huge Ben and suppose “sure it’s nonetheless working”.
He stated he was very excited that he can be “proper subsequent to the bells… at that second when everyone seems to be that clock for the beginning of the New Yr”.
