Visit to Big Ben
Click the image to watch the video!
La nostra meta di oggi è nientepopodimeno che il Big Ben, uno dei principali simboli di Londra.
Sono tante le curiosità da sapere sull’orologio che da oltre 150 anni scandisce la vita della città. Vediamo insieme quali di queste ci vengono rivelate nel video realizzato dall’associazione Guy Fox History Project.
Westminster is a very busy place. There are double decker buses, policemen, tourists, loads of statues and pigeons, of course!
Westminster is also home to the Houses of Parliament and to the most popular landmark in Britain: Big Ben. And today we are going to see Big Ben strike noon!
Are you ready to climb up the clock tower? Be prepared, there are only 334 steps to climb!
Big Ben was built over 150 years ago. There used to be a prison inside the tower. But today it has been turned into a museum.
Big Ben has four faces and each clock case is huge: 23 feet across (over 7 metres) – more than a hundred thousand times the size of a pound coin.
Each face is made of 312 pieces of white glass. There are light bulbs to illuminate the faces at night. Before light bulbs, there were gas lamps and it was somebody’s job to light them every evening.
The clock’s movement is divided into three sections, or trains:
– the going train – the section of the clock that advances the hands under the control of the swinging of the pendulum
– the chiming train – which operates the hammers for the four quarter chiming bells, four times each hour
– the striking train – which operates the very heavy hammer that strikes the Big Ben bell. The big hammer strikes Big Ben at the exact moment of the full hour, after the chimes have completed.
Then we have the escapement and the pendulum.
The escapement isolates the pendulum from all external influences and is what has made the clock famous for its accuracy.
On top of the pendulum there is a small stack of old penny coins, which are used to adjust the time of the clock. By adding or removing a penny, you can speed up or slow down the pendulum by 0.4 seconds per day.
And now we are ready to go inside the belfry to see Big Ben and wait for the chimes to start!
While we are waiting, here are a few facts about Big Ben:
- Big Ben is actually the name of the huge bell inside the Elizabeth tower
- it weighs about the same as an elephant: 13.5 tons
- it was probably named after Benjamin Caunt, a famous boxer at the time, or Sir Benjamin Hall, the civil engineer who oversaw the installation of Big Ben
- it only chimes on the hour, that’s 156 chimes a day
Il Big Ben è sempre stato famoso per la sua assoluta precisione, tuttavia, di recente, il meccanismo dell’orologio ha cominciato a perdere qualche colpo. Solitamente, la velocità di oscillazione del pendolo viene regolata semplicemente aggiungendo o togliendo una monetina da una pila di vecchi penny posta sul pendolo stesso. Questa volta, però, gli interventi di manutenzione e ristrutturazione necessari, sul meccanismo e non solo, sono tali per cui il Big Ben dovrà rimanere muto per alcuni mesi a partire dall’inizio del 2017.
Questo, però, non significa che dobbiamo per forza rinunciare a sentire il suono inconfondibile delle sue campane, anzi! Possiamo sempre scaricare i BIG BEN CHIMES da usare come suoneria del nostro cellulare. Che ne dite? j
