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- Hacker News
- His name is Strangeway, he's sporting this preposterous mustache, and he looks after Big Ben. The guy is basically a living meme lol. He must be fun at parties; at least for like 2 minutes haha.by levzettelin
- There‘s no way he is not a cartoon villain.by danhau
- Little Ben
- And they say no man can stop the march of time.by yawpitch
- You're saying this man can stop the march of time? Or of a clock?by scrollop
- Time change was last week in London :)by denimnerd42
- The first thought that popped into my mind when reading this article was whether Andrew Strangeway was the Elder who maintained The Internet on Big Ben, because the sitcom "The IT Crowd" has ruined me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDbyYGrswtgby jasoneckert
- And the men who used to clean the clockface: https://www.bbc.co.uk/videos/cneezrj0981o
Certainly scary enough for Hallowe'en.
by timthorn - That link is geo-restricted, but I think this is perhaps the same clip on YouTube:by pimlottc
- Technically, Big Ben is the bell, not the clock, from the article as well:
> A common misconception is referring to the entire tower as Big Ben, when in fact, that's just the name of the bell. Andrew clarified: "So it's The Great Clock inside the Elizabeth Tower that rings Big Ben."
by sigio - Big Ben is actually the name of the scientist, the bell is more frequently referred to as “The Creature”.by Uehreka
- I'm not sure why you're being downvoted, this is completely true.
Big Ben is the bell not the clock.
by Lio - prescriptivists go home
- So is “Big Ben" some kind of recursive synecdoche?by tolerance
- Ah, you’ve fallen for the “no true Big Ben” fallacy.
- > Technically, Big Ben is the bell, not the clock, from the article as well:
Technically I guess yeah. The tower that used to be called the "Clock Tower", is now called "Elizabeth Tower" yet it's also true that the de facto nickname for the entire tower is "Big Ben", even though technically that is the name of the bell, not the tower itself.
- I wonder if he still uses his playdate to check the time.by nosrepa
- PSA: The Big Ben tour (not Parliament) includes a climb to the clock room, and all the way up to the bells. Take the 11 a.m. slot and you’ll catch all 12 bongs at noon.
The story of how it was designed and built is full of engineering mischief and process hacking. Very much in the HN spirit. Highly recommended.
by ndr