Big Ben (and brass cleaning)

[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.

[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

[The Big Ben]

Oh. *That* Big Ben...