How Big Ben Works: Hand Winding, Penny Counterweights, & Time Tracker on Windows OS
The video below from Science Channel titled ‘How Does Big Ben Keep Accurate Time’ is amazing! It shows some exploded view animations of the top of Elizabeth Tower in which Big Ben is kept, along with plenty of behind-the-scenes footage of the interior including the main clock body. I had no idea the clock takes 90 minutes to manually crank! It also shows how they track the timekeeping, using a Windows OS laptop for logging the clock’s accuracy and piles of penny counterweights added to the clock’s pendulum to compensate for any loss of time, over time. Amazing!
Here are some quick screengrabs. This first one shows the bell itself, with adjacent secondary bell/s:
Ironically the interior of the tower is as you might expect it: industrial & weathered, with peeling paint and all:
Here are the counterweights added to the pendulum:
And a look at the software that tracks Big Ben’s timekeeping accuracy:
Watch:
[h/t to my friend CJ for originally sharing this video with me!]
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