History of the Bells

    Bells are among civilization’s oldest objects and they appear in almost every culture throughout the world. References to bells survive from earliest antiquity. Originating in Asia, bells have been made of horn, wood, glass, clay and various kinds of metal. The Chinese may have been the first to cast large bronze bells.

    Bells have ranged from thimble sized to more than twenty tons, and have had various striking
mechanisms. They have been used as symbols of freedom, to express both joy and sorrow, to warn of impending danger, to summon people to worship, meeting or school, to sound curfew, to give the time and many other signals. Prized as patriotic symbols, bells have also been taken as war trophies. Many metal bells have been lost over the centuries when melted down for use as war material.

    In earlier times, making bells was not an exact craft, and bells often were out of tune. Also, early bells made of metal often cracked. Eventually, bellfounders were able to gauge more accurately the proportions of each metal in the alloy, which allowed them to make stronger bells. Until bell towers were invented, bells were hung on wooden frames, bell poles, or in a tree in open courtyards or churchyards. The churches in Italy had the earliest bell towers, or campaniles. These towers, designed to protect bells from bad weather, dated from around 500 A.D., and often stood free of the church itself. Campanile (Kam-puh-NEEL) is derived from the Italian word meaning bell. Some bell towers also began serving as clock towers with the bell or bells ringing the hours. When carillons were invented, they too were hung in these towers.

    Carillons (23 or more bells) originated in the low countries (Belgium, The Netherlands, Luxembourg) in about 1480 and evolved from earlier bell striking mechanisms used in clocks. A pinnacle in carillon art was reached in the latter half of the 17th Century when bellfounders Francois and Pieter Hemony of France and The Netherlands were the first to tune bells with precision. Gradually, because of numerous European wars, carillons fell out of use and tuning techniques were forgotten. Then, in the 1890’s, a revival of carillon art began with the rediscovery of the tuning process for bells by Canon Arthur S. Simpson of England. The first modern carillon was brought to the United States in 1922. The largest and heaviest carillon in the world (74 bells, weighing 100 short tons) is at Riverside Church in New York City.

(Excerpt taken from, “Our Bells Ring Round the World” by van Bergen Bellfoundries, Inc.)

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