Editing Liberty Bell (section)

====Inscription====
The inscription on the bell reads:
<blockquote style="text-align center; font-size: 100%; font-variant: small-caps;"><poem>Proclaim LIBERTY Throughout all the Land unto all the Inhabitants Thereof Lev. XXV. v X.
By Order of the ASSEMBLY of the Province of PENSYLVANIA for the State House in Philad<sup>A</sup>
Pass and Stow
Philad<sup>a</sup>
MDCCLIII</poem></blockquote>
At the time, "Pensylvania" was an accepted alternative spelling for [[Pennsylvania]]. In 1787, the spelling was used by [[Alexander Hamilton]], a [[Founding Fathers of the United States|Founding Father]] and the first [[United States Secretary of the Treasury|U.S. Treasury Secretary]], on the signature page of the [[Constitution of the United States]].<ref name="script">Paige, p. 9</ref>

Robert Charles ordered the bell from Thomas Lester of the London bell founding firm of Lester and Pack, later known as the [[Whitechapel Bell Foundry]],<ref>The Franklin Institute, p. 19</ref> for [[Pound sterling|£]]150 13[[Shilling (British coin)|s]] 8[[Penny (British pre-decimal coin)|d]],<ref>One hundred fifty pounds, thirteen shillings and eightpence.</ref> (equivalent to £{{formatnum:{{Inflation|UK|150.68333|1752|r=0}}}} in {{Inflation-year|UK}}{{Inflation-fn|UK|df=y}}) including freight to [[Philadelphia]] and insurance on its transport. It arrived in Philadelphia in August 1752. 

Norris wrote to Charles that the bell was in good order, but they had not yet sounded it, since they were building a clock for the State House's tower.<ref>Kimball, p. 20</ref> The bell was mounted on a stand to test the sound, and at the first strike of the clapper, the bell's rim cracked. The episode was used to good account in later stories of the bell;<ref>Nash, p. 7</ref> in 1893, [[President of the United States|President]] [[Benjamin Harrison]], speaking as the bell passed through [[Indianapolis]], said, "This old bell was made in England, but it had to be recast in America before it was attuned to proclaim the right of self-government and the equal rights of men."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Pierce |first=James Wilson |title=Photographic History of the World's fair and Sketch of the City of Chicago |publisher=R. H. Woodward & Co |year=1893 |location=Baltimore |page=[https://archive.org/details/photographichis00piergoog/page/n16 491] |url=https://archive.org/details/photographichis00piergoog |quote=Liberty Bell. |access-date=August 17, 2010 }}</ref> Philadelphia authorities tried to return it by ship, but the master of the vessel that had brought it was unable to take it on board.<ref name="Whitechapel">{{cite web |url=http://www.whitechapelbellfoundry.co.uk/liberty.htm |title=The Liberty Bell |publisher=Whitechapel Bell Foundry |access-date=August 9, 2010 |archive-date=May 7, 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100507040444/http://www.whitechapelbellfoundry.co.uk/liberty.htm |url-status=live }}</ref>

Two local [[foundry|founders]], John Pass and John Stow, offered to recast the bell. Though they were inexperienced in bell casting, Pass headed the Mount Holly Iron Foundry in neighboring [[Mount Holly, New Jersey]], and came from [[Malta]], which had a tradition of bell casting. Stow was only four years out of his apprenticeship as a brass founder. At Stow's foundry on 2nd Street in Philadelphia, the bell was broken into small pieces, melted down, and cast into a new bell. The two founders decided that the metal was too brittle, and augmented the bell metal by about ten percent, using copper. By March 1753, the bell was ready, and Norris reported that the lettering, which included the founders' names and the year, was even clearer on the new bell than on the old.<ref>Nash, p. 7–10</ref>

City officials in Philadelphia scheduled a public celebration with free food and drink for the testing of the recast bell. When the bell was struck, it did not break, but the sound produced was described by one hearer as similar to that of two [[coal scuttle]]s being banged together. Mocked by the crowd, Pass and Stow hastily took the bell away to  again recast it. In June 1753, the recasting was completed, and the sound was deemed satisfactory, though Norris indicated that he did not personally like it. The bell was hung in the steeple of the State House the same month.<ref>Nash, pp. 10–11</ref>

The reason for the difficulties with the bell is not certain. The Whitechapel Foundry took the position that the bell was either damaged in transit or was broken by an inexperienced bell ringer, who incautiously sent the clapper flying against the rim, rather than the body of the bell.<ref>Nash, p. 9</ref> 

In 1975, the [[Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library|Winterthur Museum]] in [[Delaware]], conducted an analysis of the metal in the bell, concluding that "a series of errors made in the construction, reconstruction, and second reconstruction of the Bell resulted in a brittle bell that barely missed being broken up for scrap".<ref>Hanson, p. 7</ref> The Museum found a considerably higher level of tin in the Liberty Bell than in other Whitechapel bells of that era, and suggested that Whitechapel made an error in the [[alloy]], perhaps by using scraps with a high level of tin to begin the melt instead of the usual pure copper.<ref>Hanson, p. 5</ref> 

The analysis concluded that, on the second recasting, instead of adding pure tin to the bell metal, Pass and Stow added cheap [[pewter]] with a high lead content, and incompletely mixed the new metal into the mold.<ref>Hanson, p. 4</ref> The result was "an extremely brittle alloy which not only caused the Bell to fail in service but made it easy for early souvenir collectors to knock off substantial trophies from the rim".<ref>Hanson, p. 3</ref>