1857.] on the Great Bell of Westminster. 377 



model for casting bells, which is of course a brass bell itself, and 

 that is better than the phosphorus and aluminium alloys, though 

 inferior to bell-metal. (These were all exhibited.) 



So much for the compound metals that have been tried as a 

 substitute for bell-metal. But we have now, through the kindness of 

 M. Ste. Claire Deville, of Paris, who exhibited the mode of making 

 aluminium here last year, the opportunity of realizing the anticipation 

 then formed, from the sonorousness of a bar of aluminium hung by a 

 string, and struck. He has taken great pains in casting a bell of 

 this metal, from a drawing of our Westminster bell, reduced to six 

 inches diameter. He has also turned the surface, which improves 

 the sound of small bells, where the small unevennesses of casting 

 bear a sensible proportion to the thickness of the metal, and in fact, 

 has done everything to produce as perfect an aluminium bell as 

 possible, though at its present price it can hardly be regarded as 

 more than a curiosity. But now for the great question of its sound. 



1 am afraid [ringing it] that it must be pronounced to exceed all 

 the others in badness, as much as it does in cost. I cannot say I 

 am much surprised ; indeed you may see in the book I have referred 

 to, that I did not expect it to be successful as a bell, any more than 

 silver, merely because a bar of it will ring. But it was well worth 

 while to try the experiment and settle it. 



Still the question remains, what are the best proportions for 

 the copper and tin alloy, which we are now quite sure, in some 

 proportions, will give the strongest, clearest, and best sound 

 possible? They have varied from something less than 3 to 

 something more than 4 of copper to I of tin, even disregarding the 

 bad bells of modern times, some of which contain no more than 10 

 per cent, of tin instead of from ^-th to ^th, and no less than 10 per 

 cent, of zinc, lead, and iron adulteration, as you may see in lire's 

 Dictionary, and other books. Without going through the details of 

 the various experiments, it will be sufficient to say that we found by 

 trial, what seemed probable enough before trial, that the best metal 

 for this purpose is that which has the highest specific gravity of all 

 the mixtures of copper and tin. It is clear, however, that the copper 

 now smelted will not carry so much tin as the old copper did with- 

 out making the alloy too brittle to be safely used. You will see 

 from the table of analyses, which I shall give presently, that the 

 Westminster bell contains less tin and antimony together, and 

 more copper than the old bells of York Minster, and a great deal 

 less tin in proportion to the copper than the famous bell of Rouen, 

 which was broken up and melted into cannon in the first French 

 revolution, and of which it is worth while to mention that it appears 

 to have been commonly called the silver bell, though the analysis 

 shows it had not a trace of silver in it. We found that the 3 to 1 

 alloy, even melted twice over, had a conchoidal fracture like glass, 

 and was very much more brittle than 22 to 7 twice melted, or 7 to 



2 once melted ; and accordingly, the metal used for the Westminster 



