About
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Ernest Martin Hopkins, Class of 1901 and president of the College from 1916 to 1945, visited Oxford and Cambridge and was impressed by the bell-ringing traditions on those campuses. When Baker Library was under construction, a trustee, Clarence B. Little, Class of 1881, donated $40,000 for a set of bells to be placed in the tower to please President Hopkins.
Meneely Bell Company of Troy, New York, built the bespoke 15-bell set. The bells range in size from 200 to 5,300 pounds. They range an octave and a half on the scale, playing every note in that range except E-flat.
The bells first rang in 1928 and were rung manually for the first year. The following year, William Durrschmidt, an instrument maker and music professor, invented an automation system from three machines and a clock. It was similar to the mechanism of a player piano, where holes are punched into a roll of paper and the locations of the holes triggered the bell mechanism. There was also a keyboard in the tower so that operators could play "instantaneous music" on the bells.
In 1979, two students designed a computerized carillon to run the bells, as the system and paper rolls used for the bells' first 50 years were deteriorating.
A sixteenth bell was donated in 1981 in memory of Donal F. Morse '51. Money was also provided for the maintenance of the system and to provide payment for a bell ringer.
Bells ring the time on the hour and half hour. Melodies are played three times a day: the Alma Mater at 6 p.m., and varying pieces during breaks between classes.
Dartmouth College is one of few locations that still uses real bells instead of samples or synthesizers. Bells are turned each year so that the hammers do not wear out the same spot on each bell and we can be guaranteed the enjoyment of these real bells for years to come.
For more information, see: Vivian Wang '27, "Who Plays the Baker Bells?" (The Dartmouth, January 2024).