Volume 16 , Issue 45

History of the New Year's Eve Ball

It was around 1904 that revelers began celebrating New Year's Eve in Times Square, but it was 1907 that the New Year's Eve Ball made its maiden descent from the flagpole atop One Times Square. There have been seven versions of the Ball to signal in the New Year. I would wager that some might think Dick Clark had something to do with it.

Do we really understand the actual notion of the ball dropping to signal the passage of time? The first time ball was installed atop England's Royal Observatory at Greenwich in 1833. This ball would drop at one o'clock every afternoon. It allowed the captains of nearby ships to precisely set their chronometers.

150 public time balls are thought to be believed to have been installed arround the world after the success at Greenwich, but very few survive and still work. The tradition is carried on today in places like the United States Naval Observatory in Washington, DC, where a time ball descends from a flagpole at noon each day, and once a year in Times Square, where it marks the store of midnight not for a few ships' captains, but for over one billion people watching worldwide.

The first New Year's Eve Ball was made of iron and wood and adorned with 100 25-watt light bulbs, 5 feet in diameter and weighing 700 pounds. It was built by a young immigrant metalworker named Jacob Starr, and for most of the twentieth century the company he founded, and sign maker Artkraft Strauss, was responsible for lowering the Ball.

During the 1907-08 festivities, waiters in the fabled lobster palaces and other deluxe eateries in hotels surrounding Times Square were supplied with battery powered top hats emblazoned with the numbers 1908 fashioned of tiny light bulbs. It was at the stroke of midnight, they all flipped their lids and the year on their foreheads lit up in conjunction with the numbers 1908 on the parapet of the Times Tower lighting up to signal the arrival of the new year.

The Ball has been lowered every year since 1907, with the exceptions of 1942 and 1943, when the ceremony was suspended due to the wartime dim-out of lights in New York City. But the crowds still gathered in Times Square in those years and greet the New Year with a minute of silence followed by the ringing of chimes from sound trucks parked at the base of the tower. It was a hardening back to the earlier celebrations at Trinity church, where crowds would gather to ring out the old, ring in the new.

It was in 1920, a 400 pound Ball made entirely of wrought iron replaced the original. In 1955, the iron Ball was replaced with an aluminum ball weighing a mere 150 pounds. This aluminum ball remained unchanged until the 1980's, when red light bulbs and the addition of a green stem converted the ball into an apple for the "I Love New York" marketing campaign from 1981 until 1988. After seven years, the traditional glowing white ball with white light bulbs and without the green stem returned to brightly light the sky above Times Square. In 1995, the ball was upgraded with aluminum skin, rhinestones, strobes and computer controls, but the aluminum ball was lowered for the last time in 1998.

the millennium celebration at the crossroads of the world in 2000, the New year's Eve Ball was completely redesigned by Waterford Crystal and Philips Lighting. That crystal ball combined the latest in lighting technology with the most traditional of materials, reminding us of our past as we gazed into the future and the beginning of a new millennium.

It was in 2007, the 100th anniversary of the Times Square Ball Drop tradition, Waterford Crystal and Philips Lighting crafted a spectacular new LED crystal Ball. The incandescent and halogen bulbs of the past century were replaced by state of the art Philips Lusecon LED lighting technology that increased the brightness and color capabilities of the ball.

The beauty and energy efficiency of the Centennial Ball inspired the building owners of One Times Square to build the permanent Big Ball weighing nearly six tons and twelve feet in diameter. There are 2,688 Waterford Crystal triangles that are illuminated by 32,256 Philips Luxeon LEDs.
  |  View or Add Comments (0 Comments)   |   Receive updates ( subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

---