Author: Chris McKay
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199585695
Category : Antiques & Collectibles
Languages : en
Pages : 305
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Book Description
`Big Ben', the great clock and bells at Westminster, is one of the most iconic landmarks in Britain. From the origins of Westminster as the seat of government right up to the celebrations of the Great Clock's 150th anniversary in 2009, this book tells the story of the clock, bells, and tower.
Author: Chris McKay
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191615080
Category : Antiques & Collectibles
Languages : en
Pages : 296
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Book Description
This book covers the history of 'Big Ben', the great clock and bells at Westminster, from the origins of Westminster as the seat of government right up to the celebrations of the Great Clock's 150th anniversary in 2009. The book begins by taking the reader through a typical visit to the Clock Tower, and then begins the history of the palace of Westminster, covering the fire of 1834, the building of the New Houses of Parliament and development of the clock and the bells, going into detail on their design and installation. The book covers the famous cracking of the current bell Big Ben in 1859, with sketches of all the characters involved, the two world wars, and the disaster of 1976. The book ends with a detailed technical description of the clock mechanism. The book is richly illustrated, and will appeal not only to clockmakers and horologists, but to bell enthusiasts, and those with an interest in our rich Victorian heritage.
Author: Peter MacDonald
Publisher: The History Press
ISBN: 0752495496
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 200
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Book Description
Big Ben is perhaps the most famous clock in the world. This title tells its story, from its conception in the 1830s, after fire destroyed the ancient Palace of Westminster, to its establishment as the national timepiece and the symbol of Britain up to the present day.
Author: Caroline Shenton
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198707193
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 309
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Book Description
The saga of the epic battle to re-build the Houses of Parliament after the great fire of 1834, this is also the story of how the greatest construction programme in Britain for centuries produced one of the most famous and instantly recognizable buildings ever built
Author: Edward J. Gillin
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108419666
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 343
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Book Description
Edward J. Gillin explores the extraordinary role of scientific knowledge in the building of the Houses of Parliament in Victorian Britain.
Author: Edward J. Gillin
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110831810X
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 343
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Book Description
The Palace of Westminster, home to Britain's Houses of Parliament, is one of the most studied buildings in the world. What is less well known is that while Parliament was primarily a political building, when built between 1834 and 1860, it was also a place of scientific activity. The construction of Britain's legislature presents an extraordinary story in which politicians and officials laboured to make their new Parliament the most radical, modern building of its time by using the very latest scientific knowledge. Experimentalists employed the House of Commons as a chemistry laboratory, geologists argued over the Palace's stone, natural philosophers hung meat around the building to measure air purity, and mathematicians schemed to make Parliament the first public space where every room would have electrically-controlled time. Through such dramatic projects, Edward J. Gillin redefines our understanding of the Palace of Westminster and explores the politically troublesome character of Victorian science.
Author: Caroline Shenton
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191016985
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 309
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Book Description
When the brilliant classical architect Charles Barry won the competition to build a new, Gothic, Houses of Parliament in London he thought it was the chance of a lifetime. It swiftly turned into the most nightmarish building programme of the century. From the beginning, its design, construction and decoration were a battlefield. The practical and political forces ranged against him were immense. The new Palace of Westminster had to be built on acres of unstable quicksand, while the Lords and Commons carried on their work as usual. Its river frontage, a quarter of a mile long, needed to be constructed in the treacherous currents of the Thames. Its towers were so gigantic they required feats of civil engineering and building technology never used before. And the interior demanded spectacular new Gothic features not seen since the middle ages. Rallying the genius of his collaborator Pugin; flanking the mad schemes of a host of crackpot inventors, ignorant busybodies, and hostile politicians; attacking strikes, sewag,e and cholera; charging forward three times over budget and massively behind schedule, it took twenty-five years for Barry to achieve victory with his 'Great Work' in the face of overwhelming odds, and at great personal cost. Mr Barry's War takes up where its prize-winning prequel The Day Parliament Burned Down left off, telling the story of how the greatest building programme in Britain for centuries produced the world's most famous secular cathedral to democracy.
Author: Alexis McCrossen
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022601486X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 272
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Book Description
In Marking Modern Times, Alexis McCrossen relates how the American preoccupation with time led people from across social classes to acquire watches and clocks, and expands our understanding of the ways we have standardized time and have made timekeepers serve as political, social, and cultural tools in a society that not merely values time, but regards access to it as a natural-born right.
Author: T. Ferguson
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137007982
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 232
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Book Description
Victorian Time examines how literature of the era registers the psychological impact of the onset of a modern, industrialized experience of time as time-saving technologies, such as steam-powered machinery, aimed at making economic life more efficient, signalling the dawn of a new age of accelerated time.
Author: Edward J. Gillin
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022680917X
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 319
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Book Description
Sound Authorities shows how experiences of music and sound played a crucial role in nineteenth-century scientific inquiry in Britain. In Sound Authorities, Edward J. Gillin focuses on hearing and aurality in Victorian Britain, claiming that the development of the natural sciences in this era cannot be understood without attending to the study of sound and music. During this time, scientific practitioners attempted to fashion themselves as authorities on sonorous phenomena, coming into conflict with traditional musical elites as well as religious bodies. Gillin pays attention to sound in both musical and nonmusical contexts, specifically the cacophony of British industrialization. Sound Authorities begins with the place of acoustics in early nineteenth-century London, examining scientific exhibitions, lectures, spectacles, workshops, laboratories, and showrooms. He goes on to explore how mathematicians mobilized sound in their understanding of natural laws and their vision of a harmonious ordered universe. In closing, Gillin delves into the era’s religious and metaphysical debates over the place of music (and humanity) in nature, the relationship between music and the divine, and the tensions between spiritualist understandings of sound and scientific ones.
