The famous bongs of Big Ben have become so “temperamental” they began ringing six seconds fast.
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One of the clocksmiths, Ian Westworth, explained: ‘The error started building up and went slightly unnoticed over a weekend.
The problem with the huge bell that forms part of the clock tower of the British parliament started around August. 15, say engineers who are still checking the pendulum, air pressure, temperature and gears.
The speed of the clock is controlled by adding and removing weights to a pendulum.
You can’t just wind the hands forward.
“Imagine running your vehicle for 24 hours a day, 365 days a year for the last 156 years”, he added.
It has been the marker by which Londoners set their watches by for 156 years, but Big Ben’s bongs have been firing incorrectly, interrupting live radio broadcasts and confounding clocksmiths.
Fixing the clock – 315 ft above ground at the top of Parliament’s Elizabeth Tower – proved problematic for the expert team, as it then started running too slow. It went from being fast to being slow.
Big Ben had to slow down.
“The clock mechanics will continue to monitor the performance of the clock, and have increased their routine checks from three times per week to every day, including weekends”, the website said. As it strikes the bell we’ll stop the stopwatch.
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Surveyors hired by the Commons Commission – a group of MPs chaired by John Bercow, the Commons Speaker – previously found major subsidence in Westminster Palace, partly as a result of the digging of the Jubilee Line in the 1990s. Some experts suspect that the clock might have been out of time now for around two weeks.
