King - Bell and his bad karma - Interesting Facts

November 25, 2015 turned 280 years old one of the most gigantic, but unfortunately silent bells in the world. The famous king - a bell standing on the pedestal in the Moscow Kremlin, never called in his story.

But, justice for the sake of, it is worth saying that the bell was cast for quite practical purposes, and his silence is the same intention of the circumstances, as well as the notorious slope of the Pisa Tower.

The silent giant with the fate of fate today fulfills the role of a unique monument to the Russian foundry of the XVIII century. The fate of the grandfather - the long-liver is unquestless, and for its almost three centuries has undergone a lot of tests.

The most interesting facts

Today it is known that this is one of the biggest bells in the world. For its sizes and overweight, it takes the second line in the world ranking. Its mass is 203 tons, and he is inferior only to the great bell Dhammazy (Burma), the mass of which is 297 tons. But there is one curious addition, which allows us to climb our grandfather - a birthday party on the first line of the rating.

The fact is that in 1608, during the internecine wars in Burma, the Portuguese mercenary Felippe de Sharito-e-Nita captured the Swedagon Pagoda and kidnapped the bell, intending to pass it on the gun. However, when transported by water at the merger of the Bago and Yangon Rivers of the rafts, on which the bell was located turned over, and he drowned.

The Great Bell is still in the same place under the layer of Slah, but all attempts to raise it on the surface have not yet been crowned with success.

So, 203 tons of thickened thishine. With its impressive sizes, the ambitions of the Empress Anna John, who commands to cast a new giant from pieces of a broken old bell. The fact is that our king - the bell is a rich pedigree, with no less rich karma, unfortunately rather sad than rich.

He himself was cast in 1730 "From what was," from the remains of the bell made in 1654 and weighing 128 tons. To call it, the efforts of about a hundred people needed! The Big Assumption King is the bell, unlike our king - the bell, stood 24 years after casting before the craftsman was found, who managed to raise him and hang in the Assumption belfry. This event happened in 1679. Already then his voice was considered one of the most high-profile in the capital, overlapping the voices of all other bells.

However, on June 19, 1701, during a fire in the Kremlin, the bell fell and crashed. It is noteworthy that the bell broken during the fire was also cast from the remains of the bell, which was performed on the orders of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich with a careless pushwoman master in an ambulance hand. Its dimensions were modest, and he himself sounded only a few times, and in one of the first gentlemen of the holidays, during the Blagoves split into many pieces. It is curious that the master died from the plague in the same year, after what happened. Coincidence.

It is noteworthy that this bell was cast from the predecessor. At the beginning of the XVII century. By order of Boris Godunov, a very large bell was cast, which called the king bell. It was the great-grandfather of the current King Bell, standing now in the Kremlin. In order to hang it, cut down next to the "Ivan the Great" turret from oak logs, where the bell placed at an altitude of 4 m from the ground. He weighed the "total" 35 tons and also crashed during a fire.

Polish gentry Self Maskevich, who saw him called him, says that two ropes were tied to the bell tongue, for which 12 people were taken and pulled the language alternately, then in the other side. Dusted low, solemn hum.

As we figured out - the pedigree is long, and the karma is bad.

So, in 1730, Empress Anna Ioannovna commanded from the preserved pieces to cast a new one, with the addition of metal and bring the weight of the bell to 10 thousand pounds. Feldmarshal Miniha's son was instructed for this work to find in Paris Masters. The minih offered this work to fulfill the royal mechanics with Germen, but he considered it a joke - cast a bell of this size.

After all the coordination of the bell was cast by Russian masters Ivan Motorin and his son Mikhail Motorin in 1733-1735 on the cannon court.

Finally, the bell was cast on November 25, 1735, after one and a half years of preparatory work. When casting there were constantly unexpected situations.

During the casting on November 28, 1734, an accident occurred. Copper from smelting furnaces not only flowed into the "bell sample", but also spilled in the foundry, which led to a fire. To eliminate his consequences, Mikhail Motorina with assistants, it took a year.

Ivan Motorin died, did not have time to finish casting, and his son Mikhail completed his business.

On November 25, the final stage began in the bell casting. To prevent the repetition of the fire, about 400 people with fire pipes were all the time at the Foundry Pit. Metal melted in four melting furnaces for 36 hours, began to pour into the form. The casting itself passed in just 1 hour 12 minutes.

The inscription on the bell states that Ivan Motorin cast it in 1733, although in fact he was cast in 1735 by Mikhail Motorin.

Inaccuracy of the inscription indicates that the king of the bell was cast in the form, originally made.

The calculated amount of the mass of the bell is given in many reference books, but it is not entirely true.

The true mass of this giant is 12 327 pounds of 19 pounds \u003d 201 tons 924 kg \u003d 200 tons, with an accuracy of a tent of tons, since the exact value of PUD is 16,380 kg, and pound -0.4095 kg.

Height - 6 meters 24 centimeters, diameter 6 meters 60 centimeters.

After the bell cooled, the casing was removed from it, and chasokers went down to the casting pit. They worked out drawings on the surface of the bell, because after casting images are not clear enough. This work took a year and a half and was not completed in connection with the next fire.

On May 20, 1737, during Trinity Fire in Moscow, a wooden building was caught fire over the pit, in which the bell stood. Last minute brica began to fall into the pit. So that the bell is not melted, the escaped people began to fill the water-hot metal. As a result of rapid and uneven cooling, the bell gave 10 longitudinal through cracks and a significant piece of about 700 pounds (11.5 tons) broke off from it. Therefore, the bell was left in the foundry, where he was about 100 years old. On another old version, he fell and crashed.

However, modern studies questioned the fact that the bell made from plastic bell bronze could split during a fire, and it is assumed that the cracks arose due to abused violations in technology (the bell cooling after casting could be left on the rod and cracked from -And crimping), and the fire could become a convenient excuse.

In the favor of this version, it says that in 1736, Motorin receives a tsar-bell for a casting of only 1000 rubles and the chin of the Cellmaster of the foundry "for the works and for the sake of renewal of the bell plant" victims of a fire. And later, for the casting of bells for the Novodevichy Monastery and the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, he asks 8,000 rubles per bell

Damage to the bells were so serious that the work on the decoration of his decorations stopped, and he ran around 100 years in the Foundry pit.

Only in 1836 he was raised from there and installed on the pedestal from Ivan the Great.

In 1979, during the restoration of the bell, a piece of metal took from its crack and made a chemical analysis. Studies have shown that the bell is cast from bronze, i.e. copper alloy with tin, and alloying elements that are added to the alloy to give it certain properties.

According to the analysis conducted in the laboratory of mine enclosures, the alloy contains copper - 84.51%, tin - 13.21%, sulfur - 1.25%, gold - 0.036% (72 kg), silver - 0.25% (525 kg)

After restoration of the bell, its embossed decorations became clearly visible. You can consider the front portraits of Anna John and Alexey Mikhailovich, the images of saints, ornaments, inscriptions. All these decorations were cut out of the wood with a sculptor Fedor Medvedev, and then squeezed on the inner surface of the casing.

Vasily Kobelev, Peter Galkin, Peter Serebryak, Peter Kohtiev, who were trained by order of Peter I pedestal and molding abroad, took part in the bell decoration.

The king bell never called - we already know. We will only add that for him never even cast a language. And the one that lies on the pedestal, took from the other.

The largest bell of Trinity-Sergiye Lavra is also called "King". Molded in 1748 "Tsar-Bell" weighed 4 thousand points (64 tons), but was destroyed in 1930. In 2004, the new "tsar-bell" weighing 72 tons was raised on the laurel bell tower.

The king of the bell is depicted on the thousands of white-leaved bills, produced by General Denikin in the Crimea during the Civil War. Money, depreciated almost instantly and not practically no purchasing power, nicknamed "bells".

In 1941, the king of the Kremlin regiment was placed in the king of the bell, and he himself was repainted and covered with a protective net to protect it from air strikes.

From time to time, conversations are renewed about to discharge the bell, but experts claim that in this case he will not have pure sound.

Over time, the unique monument has become one of the reasons for the appearance of a joke about the great country, where there is a tsar-gun, which does not shoot the king of the bell, which does not call, etc.

The King Bell is a monument of the foundry of the art of Russian masters, which is written about, "that such a magnitude of bells and such beauty cannot be found in another kingdom worldwide."