LONDON (AP) — Deep
bongs and pearly tones: Led by Big Ben, bells across Britain rang out in
joyous cacophony Friday to mark the official opening day of the London
Olympics.
At precisely 8:12 a.m., 12 hours before what is expected
to be a spectacular Olympic opening ceremony, the bells heralded a day
of celebration that has been years in the making.
Big Ben — the
famous bell inside Parliament's clock tower — bonged 40 times over three
minutes to ring in the games. It was joined across the country by bells
and horns in churches, ships, boats, trucks and cars 12 hours before
the symbolic time of 2012 British Summer Time — 8:12 p.m.
The
project, "All the Bells," was the idea of Turner Prize-winning artist
Martin Creed, who once designed a piece of art that consisted of a light
being switched on and off.
"Bells are the loudest instruments,
and so I thought to do a work in public using bells, trying to make a
sort of public piece of music that could be heard everywhere, you know,
across the whole city and kind of across the whole country," Creed said.
Creed said the idea was to ring the bells as quickly and loudly as possible.
"There's no point in trying to be subtle about it," he said.
Olympic
organizers have said they believe Friday was the first time that Big
Ben's 13.5 ton bell, which usually strikes the hour, has been rung
outside its regular schedule since 1952, when it tolled 56 times for
King George VI's funeral, once for every year of his life.
With
hours to go to the opening ceremony, the Olympic torch was completing
its 7,000-mile (12,900-kilometer) journey around the British Isles with a
trip down the River Thames on the royal barge Gloriana.
It will
then go into seclusion before appearing at the opening ceremony to light
the Olympic cauldron. The identity of the cauldron-lighter, and the way
in which it will be done, is the ceremony's most closely guarded
secret.
It will be the climax of director Danny Boyle's extravaganza, which is titled "Isles of Wonder" and features 10,000 performers.
A
panorama of Britain's past, present and future, the opening ceremony
will be seen by 60,000 spectators inside the stadium and a global
television audience estimated at 1 billion. Ticket-holders must be in
their seats by 7 p.m., the pre-show begins at 8:12 p.m. and the
televised show starts at 9 p.m.
Bells will ring at the opening
ceremony, too. The show begins with the sound of a 27-ton bell from the
442-year-old Whitechapel Bell Foundry, which also made Big Ben and
Philadelphia's Liberty Bell.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press.
A worker carries a board while installing a display of international flags across the street from Big Ben Tuesday, July 24, 2012, in London.
