Times Square Ball – New Year’s Eve – New York
The Times Square Ball is a time ball dropped each year during the New Year’s Eve celebration in Times Square, Manhattan, New York City. The ball is made by Waterford Crystal and electric lights is raised to the top of a pole on the One Times Square building at 6:00 pm and then lowered to mark the coming of the New Year.
The ball descends 77 feet (23 m) over the course of a minute, coming to rest at the bottom of its pole at midnight, and a sign lights up with the digits of the new year, as the ball’s lights turn off. Toshiba’s Times Square advertising screen directly below the ball counts down to midnight as well alongside several other billboards in the area.
Every year up to one million people gather in Times Square to watch the ball drop, and an estimated 1 billion watch the video of the event, 100 million of them in the United States.
The first New Year’s Eve celebration in the area was held in 1904. The New York Times newspaper had opened their new headquarters on Longacre Square (the city’s second tallest building), and persuaded the city to rename the triangular “square” surrounding it for the newspaper. The newspaper’s owner, Adolph Ochs, decided to celebrate the move with a midnight fireworks show on the building for New Year’s Eve. Close to 200,000 attended the event, displacing celebrations held at Trinity Church.
However, Adolph wanted a bigger spectacular at the building to draw more attention to the square — in 1907, the paper’s chief electrician Walter F. Palmer constructed a lit ball that would be lowered from a flagpole at One Times Square. It was constructed with iron and wood, was lit with one hundred 25-watt bulbs, weighed 700 pounds (320 kg) and measured 5 feet (1.5 m) in diameter. At first, it dropped 1 second after midnight. Even after the Times moved its headquarters to 229 W. 43rd St., the celebration continued.
In honor of the Ball Drop’s 100th anniversary, another new ball debuted for 2008. While still manufactured by Waterford Crystal (and weighing 1,212 pounds (550 kg)), it now uses LED lighting provided by Philips (which can produce over 16.7 million colors, and programmed for more advanced patterns and effects, designed by local firm Focus Lighting) instead of halogen bulbs. The ball features 9,567 energy-efficient bulbs that consume the same amount of electricity as only ten toasters.[2] For 2009, the design was maintained as a icosahedral geodesic sphere, but doubled in size to 12 feet (3.7 m) in diameter with a weight of 11,875 pounds (5,386 kg). To accommodate the new ball (which is also now displayed year-round), the flagpole atop of One Times Square was rebuilt and enlarged, now rising 475 feet (145 m) above Times Square.
Sound effects during the countdown debuted in 1998. Every year had different sound effects except for 1999-2000 and 2000-2001 ball drops, which used the same exact sounds. The current clock-ticking debuted in 2003 and has been used since then for every single countdown.
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