How to hear Big Ben on your Mac
Big Ben isn't the tower — it's the Great Bell inside it. There are three honest ways to hear it from your desk: live on the radio, in a recording, or struck on your own hour by a clock built for the job.
What you're actually hearing
When the tower chimes, four quarter bells play the Westminster Quarters at quarter past, half past and quarter to. On the hour, the pattern finishes and the Great Bell counts — one strike at one o'clock, twelve at midnight. The Great Bell was cast at the Whitechapel Bell Foundry and weighs 13.7 tonnes. The nickname comes from Sir Benjamin Hall, who oversaw its installation. The clock it hangs in is still regulated the old way: small pennies stacked on the pendulum, and adding one speeds the clock up by 0.4 seconds a day.
Free ways to hear it
The BBC broadcasts the tolling live twice a day — on Radio 4 in the UK, on the World Service and BBC Sounds everywhere else — with one extra live broadcast on Sundays. For the real bell, that's the way to hear it: the actual metal, happening now. Recordings are easier and always available, but they run into the loop problem — one performance, repeated until the seam shows. We've written about why that happens.
A desk clock that strikes the same pattern
If what you want is the pattern rather than the broadcast — quarters playing, then the hour counted — Horologe does that on your desktop. Its Westminster voice plays the quarters and counts the hour on top of them, the arrangement real towers follow. It stays silent from 10pm to 8am unless you change that, and it can ring during a call, because it can't see one — which is why the mute is one click on the menu-bar bell. $5.99 once, on the Mac App Store.
And if you're ever in London instead of at your desk: go at the top of the hour. We've written a listening guide for standing near it.
Read next: The Westminster Quarters: the most-heard tune nobody can name