Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 August 1884 — The World’s Great Bells. [ARTICLE]

The World’s Great Bells.

Russia is in the head of the line oi bells, some of her manufacture being the most famous in the world. It is said that in Moscow alone, before the great fire, there were no fewer than 1,706 large bejls. One called the Giant, which was cast in the sixteenth century and broken by falling from its support, and recast in 1654, was so large that if required twenty-four men to ring It; its weight was estimated at 288,000 pounds. It was suspended from an immense beam at the foot of a bell-tower, but it again fell during the fire of June--10, 1706, and was a second time broken to fragments, which were used with additional material in 1732 in casting the King of Bells, still to be seen in Mos cow. Some falling timbers in the fire of 1737 broke a piece from its side, which has never been replaced. This bell is estimated to weigh 443,732 pounds; it is nineteen feet, three inches high, and the margin, sixty feet, nine inches. Its value in metal alone is estimated to amount to upward of $.’500,000. St. Ivan’s, also in Moscow, is forty feet, nine inches in circumference, sixteen and one-half inches thick, and weighs 127,380 pounds. The bells of China rank next to those of Russia ”in size. In Pekin there are seven bells, each of which, according to Father Le Compte, weighs 120,000 pounds. The weight of the leading great bells of the world may be seen in the following: King of Bells, (M05c0w).....,........443,732 St. L.-an’s (Moscow) 127.38 P kn 121,0 C Vienna 4 \2OC Olmutz (B -hem a) 40,000 Rouen (Fra .ce) ’. .4 >.COC St Paul s :.'8,47C “Biz Ben” (Westminster) 3 -,35C Montreal ............. . 2s; 6C St Pe ers(tioni )... 18.60 C —lnter Ocean.