Inventions & Discoveries: When were bells first made?

Bells maybe considered as one of man’s first musical instrument. They go back so far in the history that it is impossible to trace their origin.

More than 40 centuries ago, Chinese had an instrument that consisted of 16 flat stones suspended in a frame and this gave forth a scale of exotic notes when struck by a wooden mallet. Of course, we think of bells as being made of metal. Yet bells for horses are mentioned in the Bible (Zecharian XIV -20). And king Solomon is supposed to have had large gold bells on the roof of his temple to keep the birds away.

The ancient Greeks and Romans had various types of bells including hand bells used by priests. Women walked in streets of Sparta striking small bells when a king died. Bronze bells have been in excavations at Ninevah, which was destroyed about 612 B.C. Small bells resembling our modern sleigh bells have been found in ancient tombs in Peru about 1,500 years old.

The bells are developed in two different forms. One was the Eastern and the other was Western. In the Orient, the bell took the shape of ‘pot’ and ‘bowl’. The bowl became the gong, which is a distinctively oriental bell. The pot developed into the Chinese and Japanese ‘barrel formed’ bells. In Western countries the bell took the shape of ‘Cup’, and later it had a clapper so it could be struck from inside.