Philadelphia’s Liberty Bell weighs approximately 2,080 pounds. The bell is one of the best-known symbols associated with American independence and the America250 era.
The Pennsylvania Provincial Assembly commissioned the bell in 1752 from the London firm Lester and Pack, later known as the Whitechapel Bell Foundry. After the bell cracked, local founders John Pass and John Stow recast it twice; their names appear on the bell.
The popular story that the Liberty Bell rang to announce the Declaration’s adoption is not supported by a contemporary account. It may have rung during the public reading on July 8, 1776, but the famous association developed later. The bell’s name became widely established through the nineteenth-century abolitionist movement.