198 Nezo Publications. 



had been collected. He has sent four young Russians, destined 

 for official situations in Siberia, to be educated in the mining 

 Academy of Frey berg. — Annals of Phil. Dec. 1828. 



19. Apparatus for the Sounding of' Church- Bells ^ invented in 

 Denmark. — It is well known, that buildings suff*er much from 

 the sounding of bells, especially when they are very heavy„ 

 Let one, in fact, only imagine a mass of several tons swinging 

 to and fro, and he will readily perceive how much a building 

 must be shaken by it It has long been tried to invent proper 

 means of sounding bells without pulling. These means have 

 hitherto consisted in striking the bell with a hammer or clapper, 

 put in motion by a machine, which may be made to ga fast or 

 slow. The intervals, however, are rarely equal, and the clapper 

 or hammer, after each blow, remains some time in contact with 

 the bells, rendering the sound less distinct. Some of these in- 

 conveniences have been removed by a machine, invented by the 

 Danish smith Soendsen. This machine, however, had the de- 

 fect of being too complex, and of not being founded on the law 

 of free oscillations. On the occasion of suspending a new bell 

 in the belfry of the church of Notre Dame, at Copenhagen, Pro- 

 fessor Oersted endeavoured to improve Soendsen's machine. 

 For this purpose, he introduced into it a balance, similar to that 

 of a pendulum. An axis, by turning, raises a hammer, which, 

 at each turn, strikes the bell, and produces a sound which cannot 

 be distinguished from that emitted by the bell when tolled. 

 This mechanism has the additional advantage of requiring only 

 a single person, whereas, to toll bells, it sometimes requires so 

 many as ten. The motion of the axis may be accelerated or re- 

 tarded. Perhaps, also, by means of the new apparatus, the 

 same sound may be obtained from a much smaller mass of me- 

 tal. Professor Oersted hopes that the ideas here emitted will 

 excite other persons to improve the sounding of bells. We re- 

 commend this subject to the attention of the magistrates of 

 our different towns. — Oversigt over det Jcong. danske Videns- 

 kab ; Selskabs forha/ndl ; 1827, p. 15. 



