Photo Special: Big Ben Turns 150

Big Ben, arguably the world’s most famous clock, celebrated it’s 150th birthday on Sunday.

Technically, Big Ben really is just the clock’s largest bell, but the name has come to be used for the prominent clock tower itself. The bell was cast in April 1858 and was first rung in the clock tower May 31, 1859.

The chimes are based on a snatch on Handel’s Messiah

The tower is 314 feet high, roughly 16 storeys

Tunnelling for the Jubilee line left the tower leaning 220mm (8.66 in) to the North-West

The minute hand is 14-ft long, the hour hand is 9-ft long

The north and east faces of the clock have heaters to prevent the hands freezing

The clock face is cleaned every five years

It is the biggest chiming clock tower in the world but in terms of size it is easily beaten. The clockface on the top of the Royal Liver Building in Liverpool is bigger. Worldwide, it looks like a wrist-watch compared to the clock on the Abraj Al Bait Towers in Mecca whose face, when finished, will measure 80 metres to Big Ben’s puny 6.9 metres

Each face is lit by 27 bulbs – low-energy and radio-controlled nowadays

The bell was made in Whitechapel. The bell’s tone is E flat – very flat, in fact, due to cracks in the bell

The flatbed clock mechanism – revolutionary 150 years ago – ticks with remarkable accuracy

The 15 ft pendulum that controls the time-keeping keeps on swinging at two-second intervals, with minor adjustments for expansion or contraction using pre-decimal pennies: 1d speeds the clock up by 2/5th of a second over 24 hours

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