(WBBM NEWSRADIO) -- There was a dedication at the University of Chicago Friday for 10 massive change-ringing bells with names on them in honor of people linked to Chicago or the institution.
The bells weigh up to 2,000 pounds. The names on them include Barack Obama, Jean Baptiste Pointe du Sable, Jane Addams and Carl Sandburg.
Also honored is Steve Goodman, Studs Terkel, civil rights activist Timuel Black, Georgiana Rose Simpson, the first African American woman to receive a Ph.D. in the United States; the U of C’s founding president William Rainey Harper and legendary bell ringers Arthur Nichols and Bruce and Eileen Butler.
Andrew Wilby is CEO of the bell foundry in England that’s been in operation since the 1700s and where the University of Chicago’s bells were cast.
“They are very good ringer bells, and several people were thinking we ought not let them come across here because they were too good to export,” Wilby said.
Change-ringing bells involve one person per bell pulling on a rope and timing its ringing with other bells. Tom Farthing is the Mitchell Tower captain at the U of C and says the new bells will be fabulous.
“The old bells were lovely, however, they were incredibly difficult to ring. They were, actually, internationally known as being difficult,” he says.
A crane will be lifting the new bells into place in the coming weeks.
Christian Haller is one of the donors who made the 10 new change-ringing bells possible.
“I learned to ring here. I was a ringer of the old bells. They were heavy and difficult. It was said if I could ring here, I could ring anywhere."
Wylie Crawford also used to play the old change-ringing bells at the U of C in the 1970s and says it’s a physically taxing thing to do.
“You do stand in front of a rope and there’s one-person per bell and you use the momentum of the bell plus your weight to adjust the speed at which the bell swings.”
The old change-ringing bells will be reinstalled over the new bells in Mitchell Tower and will be outfitted so that they chime with electromagnetic hammers rather than swinging and being operated individually by people.
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