Want to see the Liberty Bell this semi-quincentennial but don't have the time or cheese for a pilgrimage to Philadelphia? Have no fear: Chances are, there's one at a state capitol, museum, or even a fire station near you. It won't be the original, but it'll be a dead ringer. For a savings bond drive in 1950, the Treasury Department commissioned copies of the famously broken bell, one for each US state and several territories. Except for the serial numbers, they were faithful replicas—right down to the Pass and Stow trademark and a faux crack. There's a small but growing group of "bell hunters" who've dedicated themselves to visiting as many of the replicas as possible. If they were a gang, Tom Campbell would be the ringleader. "It was a casual thing that turned into an obsession," Campbell, a graphic designer, tells the AP.
Ordered for the Pennsylvania State House, now known as Independence Hall, the bell cracked on its first test ring in the 1750s, was melted down and cast anew. There's no evidence it was even rung on July 4, 1776. No one knows exactly when or how the bell cracked again, but the last major attempt to restore it to ringing condition was in the 1840s. Campbell didn't learn about the replicas until he moved to Denver in the late 1990s. "I was wandering around ... and cut across the Capitol lawn and saw a full-size Liberty Bell sitting there," he recalled. He read about the bond drive on a small bronze plaque, and a quest was born. As Campbell and his wife, Dawn Putney, traveled the country, they began building bell trips into their itinerary. One day, she surprised him with his own website: tomlovesthelibertybell.com "It was just a ... fun goof," he said.
The replicas were cast by the Paccard Foundry, run by a family who've been making bells in southeastern France since 1796. They weigh the same as the original—2,080 pounds—but differ from the OG bell in one very important respect: metallurgical makeup. According to the National Park Service, the original was 70% copper, 25% tin, and "small amounts of lead, gold, arsenic, silver, and zinc." In a bell, those other metals amount to "impurities," said Anne Paccard, the foundry's communications director and chief for "art of sound" projects, like sculptures that feature bells. "The original Liberty Bell is a very poor quality bell, metallurgically speaking," she said. "The bells we delivered in 1950 are made of a specific alloy of bronze called 'airain': 78% copper, 22% tin, nothing else."
The Treasury bells toured the country on the backs of flatbed Ford trucks equipped with loudspeakers and festooned with red-white-and-blue banners. "You could buy a savings bond, ring the Liberty Bell, have a party," Campbell said. At the drive's end, Treasury gave the bells to the 48 states and the then-territories of Alaska, Hawaii, the US Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico. The District of Columbia and the Treasury Department each got one as well. (Three others went to Tokyo, a church in Paccard's hometown, and the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum in Independence, Missouri, giving that state two bells.) Much more on the storied bells here.
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