While some theorize that the prodigious bell’s nickname derived from another 19th-century English heavyweight known as “Big Ben,” bare-knuckle boxing champion Ben Caunt, the most likely eponym is Sir Benjamin Hall, a Welsh civil engineer who served as a member of the House of Commons for nearly three decades. Two months later, however, the heavy striker cracked the bell, and Big Ben fell silent for upwards of four years until it was rotated and a lighter hammer delivered a more gentle touch to a different spot on the bell.
The tower’s clock began ticking on May 31, 1859, and the new bell, struck from the outside by a hammer rather than swung and struck inside by a clapper, first rang out on July 11, 1859.
A second, lighter bell was hoisted up to the belfry in October 1858.
The first version of Big Ben cast for the tower arrived in London in 1856, but it cracked before it could ever be put in place.
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