Big Ben goes digital

APR 01 1980

The BBC's overseas service reported that Big Ben was to be modernised with a digital readout, its chimes replaced by beeps, and offered the four clock hands to the first listeners who wrote in. A Japanese seaman in the mid-Atlantic radioed the station to claim one. The response was mostly anger rather than amusement; Tony Lightley of the overseas service conceded that surprisingly few people thought it was funny.