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Big Ben (and brass cleaning)

Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2009 3:27 pm
by SplatterTone
I came across this web page about Big Ben. On the right is a link to a virtual tour that I thought was interesting and informative. Expand the tour to full screen to get the full effect.
http://www.parliament.uk/about/visiting/big_ben.cfm

Doing some additional reading about Big Ben (specifically, what is a gravity escapement) led to this web page with a bunch of clock information, among which are animations of clock escapements.
http://www.abbeyclock.com/tframe.html
There is also a discussion of brass clock parts cleaning that could be applied to brass instruments. The bit at the end about de-oxidizing with electrolysis looks interesting.

Re: Big Ben (and brass cleaning)

Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2009 8:38 pm
by SplatterTone
Also, this item on how they added the leap second to Big Ben.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7797818.stm

Re: Big Ben (and brass cleaning)

Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2009 9:06 pm
by The Big Ben
Oh. *That* Big Ben...