Campus Myth Busted: NIC has Chimes, not Bells

We’ve all walked across campus and heard the bells tolling the quarter hour countless times, but what if I told you that what you’re hearing aren’t bells at all?

These are the chimes that we hear across the NIC campus. The 12 chimes produce all of the notes in the Big Ben tune and play every quarter hour from the room of the library.

NIC’s campus does not have bells, instead it has a device called a carillon. NIC’s carillon is a set of chimes hanging inside of a long box in the Special Collections room of Molstead Library. Those chimes are struck every quarter hour to produce the sounds we hear projected from the roof of the library every day.

Andy Finney, Coordinator of Learning Resources Technology at NIC, is the carillon’s caretaker on campus. Finney said that while some carillons are digital and just play a recorded sound, NIC’s chimes are special; “This is an electromagnetic device—a true carillon. Every hour on the quarter hour, it actually plays the bells.”

Finney explained that a man named Bob Murray, who passed in the Fall of 2015, and worked NIC for 42 years in various positions, used to play the carillon regularly. The carillon has a small keyboard and tape deck which allowed Bob Murray and a few others, such as 20-year NIC secretary Doris May, who passed in the summer of 2011, to record song selections for the carillon which make up most of the songs we hear played around campus to this day.

Bob Murray, (third from right) worked for NIC for 42 years in several positions across the NIC campus. He served as the Natural Sciences instructor and Dean of General Studies. He also recorded several songs for NIC’s carillon that are still being used around campus.

The chimes once played other tunes besides the one we hear every quarter hour, such as festive songs for holidays like Christmas and Easter. The song “Pomp and Circumstance no. 1” originally by Edward Elgar was a regularly played tune around campus back in the day. Finney said the tune was played every year during commencement, but as the device has aged over time, they have cut back the number of tunes it plays.

This keyboard uses the switches pictured above to span several octaves, and was used by Bob Murray and others to record songs for the carillon.

Although it may be aged and weathered now, the carillon was considered high-tech when the school received it back in 1984. The device’s circuit board has all modern components for back in that day, and even has a battery backup for the clock so that it can continue to function even if power was cut off.

The carillon was donated by the Dunnigan family in memory of a woman named Loretta Dunnigan, who passed in 1983 and received many awards in her lifetime, including the North Idaho Golden Medallion for outstanding work at NIC.

Andy Finney, Coordinator of Learning Resources Technology, and the caretaker of the chimes, stands next to the carillon in the special collections room of Molstead Library.

Finney said, “I think it’s important for every campus to have bells because it’s really an audible way for students to track where they are at any given hour. It really demarks most of your higher education institutions.”

Thanks to the Dunnigan family’s contribution, the NIC campus has been able to make use of these beautiful chimes for nearly 40 years. Finney concluded by saying, “We hope we can keep it another 50 years.”