What did the Liberty Bell sound like? Science is on the case.

The Liberty Bell, famed for its cracked appearance, has not been rung in 180 years, yet scientists have not abandoned attempts to deduce what the bell might have sounded like when it did toll. To mark America's 250th anniversary, researchers from Pennsylvania State University have created models of its acoustic properties, using data from an exact replica of the bell. The findings were initially shared at a meeting of the Acoustical Society of America in Philadelphia and later published in Physics Today.

The precise date of when the Liberty Bell acquired its unique crack remains uncertain, but the earliest record suggests it took place between 1817 and 1846. An account from February 1846 in the Public Ledger detailed the bell's ringing, noting that it had developed a crack. The incident was exacerbated by an earlier attempt to fix the crack by filing down the sides, which only worsened the damage. As a consequence, the bell was declared "now hangs in the great steeple irreparably cracked and forever dumb."

It is not the first time the Liberty Bell had cracked. Shortly after its arrival in Philadelphia in 1752, the rim cracked, and the clapper struck during testing produced a sound that one eyewitness likened to coal scuttles banging together. In response, the bell was recast twice by local foundry workers, John Pass and John Stow. Each recasting resulted in a different sound, with the first being particularly harsh.