The Sun.
London, England, 1859-08-29 00:00:00

TILE WESTMINSTER CLOCK.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE TIMES.
Sir,—l have a short but tolerably decisive
answer to give to Sir C. Barry and all his certifi-
cates from the people who did the hand business
for him.
The hand and tail, or partial external counter-
poise, which constitute the whole weight to be
moved outside the dial, and of which he got my
approval in 1857 (subject to the question of their
being found strong enough) weighed 1 cwt. 2 qr.
14 lb., and consisted of gun-metal only.
It seems that he did afterwards find them too
weak, as I told him I believed he would, in spite
of all the assurances of himself and his en-
gineers to the contrary; and then, without
fitting me know anything about it, he began
patching them up with copper at the back of the
hand and adding lead to the tail, till they reached
nearly 3 cwt., and required 3. cwt. more of the
short counterpoises inside to complete the balance.
The statement that I made, the counterpoises
would do him no good if it were true, because the
weight of the hands, of course, fixed that of the
counterpoises, but it is simply false besides.
His figure of 1 cwt. 25 lb. as the weight of the
hand without its tail is equally irrelevant, as that
is a merely arbitrary division of the external mass
into two parts, both of which equally produce the
friction to be overcome by the clock ; and, as their
lengths are very different, they do not balance
each other, though the weight looks the same on
paper ; and even that is gratuitously wrong also,
for he has omitted the lead or something else.
There is now lying at Westminster a cast-iron
hand, his first essay in the art, which certainly had
the merit of being strong enough ; but I had once
rejected it, as being at least twice the proper
weight. That weighed under 5 cwt., with its com-
plete counterpoise ; and yet he has the face to say
that I afterwards approved a weaker hand, weigh-
ing with its counterpoises 6 cwt.
He knows also that I always told him the right way
was to make the hands as thin tubes, as the new ones
are ; and that so made the whole weight need
not exceed. 2 cwt., which is exactly the weight of
the new ones completely counterpoised.
The long and short of the matter is that, as usual,
he made every blunder that lay open to him, and
grossly deceived me into the bargain, by getting
my consent to a pattern lighter than the one
I had
first condemned, and then secretly alteringit into
one much heavier and in every
respect worse.
If he has any more to say I shall not be able to
return his fire with the usual velocity, as I am
going into the north to-day, having already lost
three weeks of the long vacation by staying
curedayin a
ghers fareto
see his blunders put in train for being
as possible.
May I take this opportunity of adding that
several musicians of great eminence assure me that
the new Big Ben is very superior in tone to the old
one, which deviated from the pattern I had given ?
Orre of them says he considers it the finest bell in
Europe. This, however, is a matter of musical
opinion, which I do not feel competent to discuss
myself ; but after all that has been said to the
contrary, by persons not much more competent, it
is a fact which ought to be known.—l remain, sir,
yours obediently,
Aug. 27. E. B. DENISON.