Episode 1 of 3
Great Clock Enters Service
- When
- 1859
- Where
- Palace of Westminster
- Part of
- Big Ben starts keeping time
The Great Clock at the Palace of Westminster entered service in 1859, following construction by Edward John Dent and Frederick Dent.
The clock mechanism, designed by Edmund Beckett Denison and George Airy, was constructed by Edward John Dent and Frederick Dent. Denison had time to experiment before the clock's installation in April 1859, inventing a double three-legged gravity escapement. The clock entered service in 1859, striking the hour to within a second of the time.
Sources
- Big Ben Wikipedia, revision of 2026-10-03
- Palace of Westminster Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-21
Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.