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Liberty Bell

Today a symbol of the entire United States, the Liberty Bell began as a finishing touch for the Pennsylvania State House in Philadelphia. Begun in 1732, the State House was at last ready for an impressive bell for its steeple in 1751. The colonial assembly authorized the superintendents of the State House to order -a suitable bell, of about 2,000 pounds in weight, from England.

The bell was cast by master bell founder Thomas Lester in 1752 in the Whitechapel section of East London. The foundry dates back at least as far as 1570, and possibly earlier, and still operates today under the name of the Whitechapel Bell Foundry.

During the 18th century, the same foundry also cast bells for St. Michael's Church in Charleston, South Carolina and for Trinity Church in New York City. They also cast "Big Ben", the famous 13.5 ton bell in the clock tower of the Houses of Parliament at Westminster in London, in 1858.

The, bell for the State House arrived in Philadelphia around the end of August 1752. Soon after its arrival, probably early in September, the bell was temporarily mounted to test its sound. The clapper swung for the first time, struck the bronze wall of the bell, and cracked it so badlv that the bell could not be rung again.

Bells date back into ancient times in Europe and Asia. The art of bellfounding advanced much earlier in China than in the West. In Europe, Christian churches used bells to call worshippers. By the sixth century, early European bells were made of flat riveted plates (something like modern cowbells). Hand bells were cast of bronze around the ninth century, and larger cast bells followed in later centuries.

Traditional bell metal is bronze, generally about 75 per cent to 80 percent copper and the rest mostly tin. Church bells were often melted to cast guns in times of war; fittingly enough, bronze cannon barrels were sometimes made into bells. Medieval rulers sometimes donated silver and gold to be melted into bell metal. Although this seems generous, adding silver or gold actually hurts the sounds of the finished bell.

Good bell metal that yields a pleasing sound is quite brittle. If the mount or the clapper remains in contact with the bell metal when it's vibrating, it might crack. Old-time bell ringers and casters insisted that just touching a bell while it was vibrating can cause it to shatter. Bells cracked frequently, and were often melted for replacements.

The process of casting a large bell, even today, is remarkably similar to the way it was done centuries ago. A bell is made from two molds. An interior mold, or core, shapes what will become the inside of the bell. It is a chimney of curved bricks, which are covered with "loam"; a mixture of clay, manure and horse hair. The loam is shaped with a wooden template to conform to the interior contours of the bell.

A coating of non-adhesive material (substances ranging from lard to graphite have been used) is applied to the core. Then, a "false bell" of loam is built up around the core. Like the inside mold, the outer surface of the false bell is also shaped with a wooden template.

When the false bell is smooth and dry, wax letters can be applied. Then, the false bell is coated with wax. An outer mold, called a cope or a case, is built of loam around the false bell. A charcoal fire inside the hollow core provides heat to dry the mold and burn away the wax before the finished molds are removed and cleaned. Each bell cast in this way is unique, because the molds are destroyed when the bell is removed.

The interior mold is set down into a sand pit, and the cope is fastened around it. Bronze, which melts at 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, is poured through a hole in the top of the cope; the metal fills the spaces between the molds to create the bell. A large bell might require up to a week to cool before removing the molds. The clapper is cast separately and fitted together with its bell later.

Once cooled and out of the mold, the bell is"tuned". Earlier bells were tuned by chipping and scraping away some of the inside or the lip of the bell. After removing some of the metal, a worker would tap the bell with a mallet, and the tone revealed the bell was now in tune. Once tuned, bells stayed in tune unless they were damaged. Occasionally, old bells were reworked in this way to make them harmonize with a new bell added to a church.

Perhaps the most important change in bellfounding came with the invention of the steam-powered vertical lathe in the 19th century. With this lathe, a bell could be turned upside-down and mechanically scraped into tune much more quickly than by using hand tools.

When the State House bell cracked, there were no ships in port with enough space to take it back to England for repair. "Two ingenious workmen of Philadelphia", John Pass and John Stow, agreed to recast the bell. Stow was a native of that city. Newspaper ads show that he was a brassfounder, although the only bells mentioned in his advertisements were horse bells and "house spring-bells".

John Pass was from the Mediterranean island of Malta, which was then still controlled by the Knights of Malta. It's possible that Pass is the anglicized version of his Maltese surname, Pace. Newspaper ads connect him with the Mount Holly Iron Works, which were about 20 miles from Philadelphia in New Jersey. It's thought that Pass was an apprentice bellfounder in his homeland.

The two Philadelphians went to work, breaking the cracked bell into pieces to melt down. They believed that the metal in the London bell was too brittle. After casting some small bells and experimenting with the proportions of metal, they decided to add one and a half ounces of copper to each pound of the original bell metal.

On 10 March 1753, Pass and Stow opened the mold of their new bell, and the bell was ready for hanging by April 1753. Settling the great bell in its new frame required considerable labor. The colony paid five pounds, 13 shillings and 10 pence for the job, including the layout of 36 loaves of bread, three gallons of rum and a barrel of beer for the workers. Although the "mould was finished in a very masterly manner, and the letters... [were] better than [on] the old one", the extra copper gave the bell a dull, disappointing sound.

Tired of being "teazed with the witticism of the town", Pass and Stow asked for another chance at recasting the bell. They realized that adding so much copper was a mistake, so they added more tin to sweeten the tone of the next bell. In June 1753, the new bell was placed in the tower of the State House. This bell is the one known today as the Liberty Bell. The inscription on the final version reads, "Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof - Lev. XXV, v. x. By order of the Assembly of the Province of Pensylvania for the State House in Philada. Pass and Stow Philada MDCCLIIL" (The spelling of "Pennsylvania" without the double "N" was not rare at the time.)

Opinions were divided about the sound of the bell. After receiving complaints, the Whitechapel Bell Foundry sent a replacement bell. Philadelphians were not pleased with its sound either, but the replacement was put in the State House as a clock bell. Pass and Stow were paid for their work in September. Little is known of Pass after his work on the Liberty Bell. Stow died a few months after their work was finished.

The Liberty Bell once weighed 2,080 pounds; today, it is somewhat less because small amounts of metal were removed over the years in tuning or repairing the bell. It stands three feet high "from lip to crown". Analysis of the bell metal reveals that it is 70 percent copper and 25 percent tin, with traces of lead, zinc, gold, silver and even some arsenic! It rang in the tone of E flat.

Before 1776, the Liberty Bell rang to mark many public meetings and events leading to the Revolution, such as the repeal of the 1764 Sugar Act, and a 1765 public meeting to protest the Stamp Act. It also rang to celebrate the accession of George III to the throne. Over the years, the bell also rang to alert Philadelphians when fires broke out. In 1772, people living near the State House petitioned the Assembly to stop ringing the bell so often, because the racket was too disturbing.

For many Americans, the Liberty Bell is associated with the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia on 8 July 1776. Actually, recent research indicates that this probably did not happen. By that time, the belfry of the State House had deteriorated so much that it was unsafe to ring the bell. Of course, whether or not the bell rang, it was part of Independence Hall (as the State House has long been known), and both are thoroughly melded together as patriotic symbols in the US.

British forces menaced Philadelphia in 1777. The State House bell, and other bells of the city, was moved out of town to keep the British from melting them down into cannons. The Liberty Bell was hidden under the floorboards of the Zion Reformed Church in Allentown. In 1778, the British left Philadelphia and the bell was returned.

The wooden part of the deteriorating State House belfry was torn down after 1781, and a temporary roof placed over the remaining brick section of the tower. The Liberty Bell was lowered and placed in the brick tower room. The Liberty Bell might not have rung for the Declaration of Independence, but it did ring to celebrate the ratification of the US Constitution in 1787. Among other events, it also rang in 1789 to call students to classes at the University of Pennsylvania; in 1790 upon the death of Benjamin Franklin; and in 1804 after the death of Alexander Hamilton.

The Continental Congress met in the old State House from 1775 to 1783. The Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the US Constitution were debated within its walls. In 1799, the capital of Pennsylvania became Lancaster, and was later changed to Harrisburg. The old State House stood empty for a few years, until artist Charles Willson Peale was given permission to move his private museum into the building. The city of Philadelphia bought the property in 1816.

In 1824, the Marquis de Lafayette toured the US and visited many sites associated with the Revolution. His visit to the State House drew fond attention to the old landmark, which by then was being called the Hall of Independence. A wooden steeple, designed to resemble the original one, was added in 1828. The bell made by Pass and Stow went into the new steeple.

A popular tradition states that the Liberty Bell cracked while tolling after the death of Chief Justice John Marshall in 1835. The date when the crack first opened up, though, is not actually known. The familiar two-foot-long gap that is easily visible on modern pictures of the bell was manmade. At first, this was a hairline crack. It was widened with a technique called stop-drilling so that the sides would not vibrate together and further damage the bell. Rivets were added to strengthen the bell.

The Liberty Bell rang for the last time on Washington's birthday in 1846. The bell, said a Philadelphia newspaper, "gave clear notes and loud, and appeared to be in excellent condition until noon, when it received a sort of compound fracture in a zig-zag direction through one of its sides, which put it completely out of tune, and left it a mere wreck of what it was." The writer added that he managed to obtain a souvenir fragment that had broken off of the bell. Since then, the Liberty Bell has not been rung, but it has been carefully tapped on a few special occasions.

Until the 1830s, the bell was usually called the State House Bell. At that time US abolitionists, inspired by the bell's Biblical inscription "Proclaim liberty throughout all the land..." chose it as a symbol. Since that time, it has been known as the Liberty Bell.

In the years before the Civil War, popular stories and legends about the Revolution appeared in print as the last men and women who could remember those times passed away. It was around this time that the greatly cherished legend about the Liberty Bell ringing to celebrate the Declaration of Independence appeared. Rapidly becoming a national symbol, the Liberty Bell was lowered to the first floor of the old State House and placed on a pedestal for public display in 1852.

The Liberty Bell's most important service came after the Civil War. The bell was sent by train to several large fairs and expositions. First came the World's Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition, which was held in New Orleans in 1885. Other trips took the Liberty Bell to Chicago, Atlanta, Charleston, Boston, St. Louis and San Francisco. The trains made frequent stops to allow as many people as possible to see the relic. Although it might not have really rung to announce the Declaration of Independence, the Liberty Bell's nationwide travels made it a tangible symbol of a reunited country.

The bell's final trip was across the US for the Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco in 1915. One event tied to the Exposition was the first transcontinental telephone call. In New York, telephone inventor Alexander Graham Bell talked to his associate, Thomas Watson in San Francisco. The two men had made the first call on Bell's telephone in their laboratory on 10 March 1876. During the 1915 call, the Liberty Bell was tapped with a mallet. The sound, which was electrically amplified, carried from coast to coast through the wire.

In 1926, the sesquicentennial of the Declaration was celebrated in Philadelphia. A giant replica of the Liberty Bell was built for the event. Newspapers featured a fashionable actress wearing a new "Liberty Bell hat". When Allied troops landed on the beaches of Normandy on D-Day (6 June 1944), the Liberty Bell was once again tapped with a mallet. The sound of its ringing was played all over the world by radio.

Today, the Liberty Bell is owned by the city of Philadelphia, but the National Park Service takes care of it. In 2003, it was moved from Independence Hall to save it from some of the foot traffic of visitors. The bell is now on display in the new Liberty Bell Center, where one can look through the windows and see Independence Hall nearby.

The Liberty Bell has appeared on many US and foreign stamps, as well as the reverse of the US Franklin half dollar coin from 1948 to 1963. Also, the bell has been used for countless patriotic posters, as well as numerous print ads and in souvenir replicas, plates, teapots, buttons, medallions, badges and even a bicentennial shower head in 1976. A famous musical work associated with the Liberty Bell is john Philip Sousa's "Liberty Bell March", which he wrote in 1893. Oddly enough, the tune is best known today as the theme song for the British comedy series Monty Python's Flying Circus.

David A. Norris. Chimes of Freedom: The Liberty Bell. . December/January 2008.

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