1857.] on the Great Bell of Westminster, 875 



solids, the thickness itself varies as the diameter, and then the tinie 

 of vibration may be said simply to vary inversely as the diameter. 

 But for a recent letter in the Times from a Doctor of Music, who 

 seems to have taken this bell under his special protection, it would 

 have seemed superfluous to add that the size of the " column of air 

 contained within a bell " has no more to do with its note, than the 

 quantity of air in an American clock has to do with the note of the 

 wire on which it strikes. You may have half a dozen bells of 

 dijOTerent notes, because of different thicknesses, all enclosing exactly 

 the same body of air. I certainly agree with the opinion published 

 by some of the bellfounders on a former occasion, that musicians 

 are by no means necessarily the best judges of bells, except as to 

 the single point of their being in tune with each other. 



The weights of bells of similar figures of course vary as the 

 cubes of their diameters, and may be nearly enough represented 

 by these numbers— 216, 152, 110,91, 64, 46, 33, 27. But as 

 we are now only concerned with the making of a single bell, I 

 shall say no more on this point, beyond desiring you to remember 

 that the exact tune of a set of bells, as they come out of the 

 moulds, is quite a secondary consideration to their tone or quality 

 of sound, because the notes can be altered a little either way by 

 cutting, but the quality of the tone will remain the same for ever ; 

 except that it gets louder for the first two or three years that the 

 bell is used, probably from the particles arranging themselves more 

 completely in a crystalline order under the hammering, as is well 

 known to take place even in wrought iron. 



We may now consider the composition of bell-metal. It is so 

 well known to consist generally of from 5 to 3 of copper to 1 of tin, 

 that all the alloys of that kind are technically called bell-metal, 

 whatever purpose they may be used for ; just as the softer alloys of 

 8 or 10 to 1 are called gun-metal ; and the harder and more brittle 

 alloy of 2 to 1 is called speculum-metal. But you may wish to 

 know whether it has been clearly ascertained that there is no other 

 metal or alloy which would answer better, or equally well and 

 cheaper. The only ones that have been suggested are aluminium, 

 either pure or alloyed with copper ; cast steel, the iron and tin 

 alloy, called union-metal ; and perhaps we may add, glass. The 

 first is, of course, out of the question at present, as it is about 50 

 times as dear as copper, even reckoning by bulk, and much more 

 by weight. I have not heard any large steel bells myself, but I 

 have met with scarcely anybody who has, and does not condemn 

 them as harsh and disagreeable, and having in fact nothing to re- 

 commend them except their cheapness ; and as I said before, 

 nothing can be more absurd than to spend money in buying cheap 

 and bad luxuries. Much the same may be said of the iron and tin 

 alloy, called union metal, of which there was a large bell in the 

 Exhibition of 1851. It was said by Mr. Stirling, the patentee of 

 that manufacture (though I understand the same alloy is described 



