Bigben

Big Ben is the nickname for the Great Bell of the striking clock at the north end of the Palace of Westminster in London. The bell is part of the larger timekeeping complex known as the Great Clock of Westminster, housed in the Elizabeth Tower. The name "Big Ben" may refer to the bell, to the clock, or, less commonly, to the tower. The most accepted explanation is that the bell was named after Sir Benjamin Hall, a widely known civil engineer and administrator, though the exact origin is disputed.

The bell weighs about 13.7 metric tons and was cast in 1858 by the Whitechapel Bell Foundry. It cracked during initial testing and was recast in 1859 as the present Big Ben. The clock faces, four in total, each measure about 7 meters in diameter. The minute hand is about 4.3 meters long and the hour hand about 2.7 meters. The tower stands about 96 meters tall.

The clock mechanism was designed in the 1840s by Edmund Beckett Denison and refined by clockmaker Edward John Dent; after Dent's death, his stepson Frederick Dent completed it. The mechanism uses a gravity-driven pendulum and an escapement to regulate timekeeping, and the clock is driven by a system of weights. The time indicated by Big Ben is accompanied by the Westminster Chimes, a melodic sequence played by the quarter bells on each quarter hour.

In 2012, the Clock Tower was renamed Elizabeth Tower in honor of Queen Elizabeth II's Diamond Jubilee. Big Ben remains a global icon of London and of the United Kingdom, widely reproduced in media and cultural imagery. During major maintenance between 2017 and 2021, chimes were largely silenced to facilitate conservation and restoration work.