Big Ben clock suddenly run slow 6 seconds after 156 years

Already hundreds of years, Big Ben has always been a symbol and pride of Britain, and is known for accuracy up to the second.

Maybe 6 seconds is not a figure worthy of attention with ordinary watches. However, the Big Ben clock - which is a proud symbol of England - 1 second, the slow run is the big problem.

During the last 2 weeks, the people of London have realized the anomaly in the 156-year-old clock when the bell Big Ben continuous slow 6 sec per hour.

Explaining this fact, artists Ian Westworth said clock, Big Ben is experiencing an "erratic" when complex machine weighs 13 tons is always exposed to the harsh climate outside, for Whether each week are spent 3 times checked regularly. He shared with the BBC: "Imagine a machine that runs continuously 24 hours / day, 365 days / year over 156 years of uninterrupted. It simply is a bit erratic very understandable. "

The most famous clocks of the world was hit first bell on 05/31/1859 day and is known as precision machine is almost absolute with the time difference was never more than 1 second. Especially if the Big Ben autonomous, it will distort gradually. Therefore, engineers must use a penny to add to or remove from the pendulum of the clock to adjust the precision.

Want to halve the effect, just replace copper halfpenny halfpenny. This system proved very effective during the operation of Big Ben. Even until today, ancient coins not in circulation anymore valid since 1971 but we still used to adjust the hours for Big Ben.

He Westworth provides further that a team of three skilled watchmaker is tasked to troubleshoot for Big Ben. This process requires stages of testing and adjusting the weight of the pendulum to restore maximum accuracy as the original. This is an extremely important task for Londoners in general and radio in particular BBC Radio 4, where each day of direct broadcasting of the bells the famous clock.