Things that are not carillons

If you set any of the World Wide Web search engines to work on the word "carillon", you will eventually run across some places which claim to have a carillon but are not listed in our indexes.  You might think you had made a great discovery, and rush to inform us of it.  In all probability, you would then be greatly disappointed when we had to tell you that the place in question actually doesn't have any real bells at all, but just an electronic device that emits vaguely bell-like sounds.  Sometimes the loudspeakers through which those sounds are emitted are camouflaged in bell-shaped shells of varying degrees of realism.  Even more confusing, the broadcast sound sometimes originates from recordings of real bells (made elsewhere, of course), and/or is companion to a clock chime of one to five real bells.  Devices of all these types are very common in the U.S.A., having been sold in large numbers by manufacturers and dealers whose names we will not publicize.  (Here's a clue:  any place which claims to have more than 77 bells almost certainly has none at all.)

To save you that disappointment, we list here some places we know about which have included information about such devices in their Web pages.  However, we do not provide links to those Web pages, since such devices are generally of no interest to people who appreciate real bells.

Non-carillons on the Web (in order of addition to the list):

• California Tower, Balboa Park, San Diego, CA
• Geisel Library, Institute for Continued Learning, University of California, San Diego, CA
• Burns Alumni Tower, Wilkes University, Wilkes-Barre, PA
• Chapel of Memories, Mississippi State University
• vonKleinSmid Center, University of Southern California
• Holcomb Memorial, Butler University, Indianapolis, IN
• Murray State University, Murray, KY
• Stone Mountain Park, GA
• Robinson Clock Tower, Cox Hall, Emory University, Atlanta, GA (4 cast bells + electronics)
• Denny Hall, University of Washington, Seattla, WA
• Stanley Park, Westfield, MA
• Eckerd College Chapel, St.Petersburg, FL
• Ira Allen Memorial, University of Vermont, Burlington
• Carillon Tower, University of Albany, NY
• Nancy Brown tower, Belle Isle, Detroit, MI
• Columbus tower, Governors State University, University Park, IL
• Holy Cross Abbey, Canon City, CO

Some of the above are incorrectly included in the Carillon category of the Waymarking Website.

Visible sets of bell shells (in order of addition to the list):

• Carillon Park, Saint Petersburg, FL - 20 bell shells
• Nativity RC Church, Brandon/Valrico, FL - 12 bell shells

Undoubtedly there are thousands more of these things which haven't come to our attention.  If it's obvious to you that something must be electronic (for example, if the structure containing it is too small to hold anything other than loudspeakers), please don't bother reporting it.  But if you find a place which seems to be pretending to have real bells when it doesn't, you can report it using the mail link at the bottom of this page, and we'll add it to this list of deprecated things.

Of course, if you do find evidence of real bells that we don't mention, we would like to know about it.  That's one reason why we ask for feedback.  To help you distinguish between what is real and what is pretense, here are a few possible forms of such evidence you might find without actually climbing into a belfry:

• Clock hammers, which always appear on the outsides of bells played automatically from a mechanical drum or clock.
• Electric hammers, which can appear on either the insides or the outsides of bells played automatically by electric controls.
• Visible mechanical action connected to internal clappers held close to the side of the bells.
• A manufacturer's label identifying one of the bellfoundries for which we have index pages (though there are some European foundries, known or unknown, for which we do not yet have indexes).  You should also be aware that some of the makers of devices that attempt to imitate carillons have also provided controls and installation services for real bells from known bellfoundries.  (The now defunct Schulmerich Company was one such.)

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This page was created 1996/12/12 and last revised 2020/10/05.

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