Big Ben clocks up 150 year anniversary

LONDON, England (CNN) -- For the tourists flocking to London there's no shortage of famous sights at which to aim their cameras....

Buckingham Palace. The Tower of London. Nelson's Column. Or even the London Eye.

But the been-there, done-it, got-the T-shirt shot every visitor to London wants is a picture of themselves with the most famous clock in the world. Even if few of them get the name quite right.

Most of the visitors think when they are snapped alongside the 96 meter (310ft) high tower at the Westminster Bridge end of the Palace of Westminster that that is Big Ben. Even locals and taxi drivers use that name for it. But in fact that elegant Victorian edifice is the Palace of Westminster Clock Tower.

Big Ben is actually the huge 13 ton (14.5 tonnes) bell inside the world's largest four-faced chiming clock, which provides those distinctive chimes, known to Britons as the "bongs."

Alan Hughes, the director of the Whitechapel Bell Foundry company which made the bell, along with America's Liberty Bell and a number of others for cathedrals and churches around the world, has no doubt as to why people come to film and listen to the clock tower. Watch video explaining Big Ben's history »

It is, he says: "Probably the best-known bell in the world."

"When you hear Big Ben there is absolutely no mistaking that that is Big Ben. It is not just any large bell. It is Big Ben. The sound is unique."

It is unique partly because of a crack in the bell. And in fact the first bell, made elsewhere, was so badly cracked that it had to be scrapped and melted down in 1858, resulting in Big Ben being something of a bargain for the Palace of Westminster.

The bill would have been $4,757 (£2,401). But, says Alan Hughes, who showed CNN the original ledger of 16s:9d: "The first bell came back in as scrap metal, so there was an allowance for that scrap metal of a little over £1,800. The difference between that and the bill comes to £572 , so in fact we were paid £572 ($1,000) to make Big Ben."

Big Ben and the clock tower are famous landmarks. They have figured in films from " The 39 Steps" to "101 Dalmatians" and "Harry Potter and the Order of The Phoenix." The clock , which kept going through the World War II bombing blitz on London, became a crucial symbol of British defiance. Big Ben was also voted the favorite monument of British people in a recent poll.

But the Whitechapel Bell Foundry, a family business still in the premises rebuilt in 1570 after the Fire of London, has a remarkable history itself.

Says Alan Hughes: "A historian researching us around 40 years ago traced us back to 1420. We've never got very excited about 1420 because at 1570 we are the oldest manufacturing company in the UK, so we're tending to ignore the possibility of another 150 years."

You can, of course, afford to be a little blasé when some of your regular customers only come back around once a century, or perhaps three times every hundred years if they want new hand musical handbells.

Covering British politics for forty years, most of the last 20 for television, I have probably been filmed against Big Ben (or, to be accurate, the clock tower containing it) as often as anybody. And the anniversary encouraged me to check how what is officially known as the Great Bell got its nickname.

Some say it was named after the 1850s heavyweight boxer Ben Caunt. Others suggest that it was named after the Parliamentarian Sir Benjamin Hall, who as Commissioner of Works was responsible for ordering the bell.

Alan Hughes prefers to go with that version: "I suppose I like it chiefly because it was a nickname of a man who was big and loud and pompous and never used one word if 27 would do."

Ah, yes. Politicians..... E-mail to a friend