The Nation: The Nation, Jan. 5, 1976

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The X rays are in, and the diagnosticians agree: the patient can be moved. This week the Liberty Bell will be shifted from Philadelphia's Independence Hall to a pavilion one block away. The reason: during the summer months of the Bicentennial as many as 100,000 people per day will be able to file past the bell instead of some 14,000 in its present location.

The big concern was that the 2,080-lb. bell would be damaged beyond the celebrated crack that opened in 1835 while the bell was tolling for the funeral procession of Chief Justice John Marshall. Eastman Kodak made several radiographs (or giant X rays) of the bell that revealed some hitherto unknown interior cracks, but none serious enough to cause future damage. And so the bell, commissioned in 1751, will be seen—if not heard—by millions of Americans as the nation begins its third century.