Historic Chimes

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Beginning in the early 1720's, when the first bronze bells were being cast in America, through the early 1840's, American bell founders had little to no control nor understanding why a bell sounded the way it did. These early bells that were being cast sounded fine as a single pealing or tolling bell, creating either a "joyous noise" or a somber tone depending on when and how the bell was rung. Beginning in the 1840's several founders including Henry Hooper who was then the proprietor of the Revere Foundry in Boston, Andrew Meneely in West Troy, George W. Coffin and George Hanks in Cincinnati as well as several others began to understand how to manipulate the size, shape and thickness of the castings in order to achieve better sounding bells. There was a need for this by both the bell founders and the general public so that peals of 2, 3 and even 4 bells could be rung at once and have a melodious sound. 

At first, the founders would use a method of casting where they would cast a bell or a set of bells and then ring them together to see how they sounded. If one or more bells was determined to be "bad", meaning the tone was either too flat or too sharp, that bell would be set aside and a new bell created. By this time the founders had enough of an understanding of bells that if the bell was found to be too flat, they could create a bell that had a sharper tone by either casting the new one slightly smaller in diameter, or they could cast the bell slightly thicker. If the bad bell was found to be too sharp, they could cast the new bell either slightly larger in diameter or slightly thinner.

Founders would use this method for the next 50 or 60 years.

Beginning in the late 1890's founder slower began to realize that there was more than one sound that came out of a bell when it rang. This information was actually rediscovered in England, when the John Taylor Bell Foundry began experimenting with bells by casting the bells with thicker walls that normal and then thinning the walls in specific areas to flatten the sounds. They realized that there were actually five different frequencies that were vibrating and that if these frequencies could be brought into an organized fashion, the bell may ring a musical chord. These five frequencies, which bell founders refer to as partials are named the Hum Tone, Prime, Minor Third (Tierce), Fifth (Quint) and the Nominal.

Hum - Lowest partial of the bell

Prime - Musical pitch of the bell, one octave above the Hum

Minor Third - Minor third above the Prime

Fifth - Perfect fifth above the Prime

Nominal - Perceived note of the bell, two octaves higher than the Hum

The only early American Bell Foundry that was able to ever have a full understanding of how to design, cast and tune all five partials of a bell was the Meneely & Company Bell Foundry of West Troy, NY. They began this tuning method in the 1920's and carried it through the mid 1950's when they closed. 

The Meneely Bell Company of Troy, NY as well as the Buckeye Bell Foundry under E.W. Vanduzen developed a rudimentary understanding of bell tones in general an adopted a method of shortening the bell profiles, by removing metal from the bottom of the lip of the bell if they needed to sharpen it a bit. Bells with this tuning method can be seen in a number of chime installations that still exist in the US.

When looking at early American chimes, most number between 9 and 14 bells. Because these instruments are normally not tuned, or very crudely tuned, it is easy to hear bells that are flat and bells that are sharp when ascending and descending the scale. In some instances, improvements can be made in the sound of the chime, as an instrument, by removing the bells from the tower and performing some isolated tuning on the two most important partials, the Nominal and the Minor Third. These adjustments in the bell can be made with internal tuning, meaning that only metal within the inside of the bell is removed, hence preserving the historical external profile of the bell.