Duke Memorial Tower Bells

Cast by the Meneely Foundry of New York, the Bells in the east tower were a gift of the Stagg family, at a cost of $8,000--in 1908--and were first played for the N.C. Methodist Conference in December, 1908. At that time, the only other Meneely bell in Durham was the Trinity College bell, now on East Campus. The manufacturing method then was to ‘cast to a tone’, in which no adjustment to the bell was attempted after the casting. In contrast, bells manufactured today involve tuning each bell by using a lathe to cut away metal from the inside of the bell. Thus, the rarity of a group of bells that all blend without tuning is quite impressive, as well as irreplaceable.
 
There are 10 bells, an F major scale with one accidental. This is classified as a chime,  as it takes 23 bells to qualify as a carillon. A lever for each bell is the mechanism for playing, not separate bell ropes, as in bell setups that allow full rotation. These are fixed bells, and the levers connect to cables that pull the clapper against the inside of the bell, and a spring pulls the clapper back to its resting position. The cables and the juniper frame in which the bells are mounted were replaced in 1982.
Over the years, several chimers have climbed the stairs to reach the console level of the East Tower. Louis Blalock was the first employed chimer, and he played at noon each day as well as Sundays for 30 years. It is said that the neighboring tobacco factories used his chiming as a lunch signal for their workers. J.V. Hoyle took on the job in [1961]; he continued until his retirement [36] years later, and these recordings are dedicated to his memory.

Text written by Stuart McCracken, Fuller Sasser, and Al Buehler