COIN CONTROLS BIG BEN.
ACCURACY RESTORED. It was revealed recently by Sir Frank Dyson, the Astronomer Royal, that, far from having ponderous mechanism, Big Beiii, the great clock above the Houses of Parliament, responds to the slightest touch. “Whenever the clock is losing slightly, a halfpenny or penny is placed on a tray fixed about half-way down the pendulum,” Sir Frank explained. “It the clock is gaining, the halfpenny or penny is removed.” Big Ben never strays far from accuracy. During the past year it was compared on 288 days with the Greenwich Observatory, and on only twentyone days did the error reach more than one second, the maximum deviation being 1.4 seconds. As it takes a fifth of a second for the booming of Big Ben to reach the street and two seconds to reach Trafalgar Square, only a few hundred yards away, Sir Frank believes “the limits of reasonable accuracy” have been reached.
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Manawatu Standard, Volume L, Issue 219, 12 August 1930, Page 11
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155COIN CONTROLS BIG BEN. Manawatu Standard, Volume L, Issue 219, 12 August 1930, Page 11
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