the large bell in the tower of the Houses of Parliament in London, which rings regularly to tell the time. Clock designed by Sir Edmund Beckett (1816-1905), housed in the tower at the eastern end of Britain's Houses of Parliament. Big Ben is famous for its accuracy and its 13-ton bell. The name (for Sir Benjamin Hall, commissioner of works at the time of its installation in 1859) originally applied only to the bell, but eventually came to include the clock itself