This Day in History: Times Square & New Year's

Do you know why the illuminated ball drop tradition began?

On this day in 1908, an illuminated ball completes its drop in Times Square, signaling the beginning of New Year’s Day. Such a ball had never been used before, and the gathered crowd stared in amazement.

“The great shout that went up drowned out the whistles for a minute,” the New York Times reported. “The vocal power of the welcomers rose above even the horns and the cow bells and the rattles. Above all else came the wild human hullabaloo of noise.”

Since that time, of course, the illuminated ball drop has become a uniquely American tradition, televised and viewed by millions each New Year’s Eve.

But would any of it have happened without the then-Times owner, Alfred Ochs, and a party that he threw in 1904?

A lot was happening in New York that year. For one thing, that was the year that Times Square got its name. Previously known as Longacre Square, the busy intersection was renamed because the New York Times opened its new headquarters nearby. Ochs decided to throw a huge New Year’s Eve bash in celebration.

Och’s party on December 31, 1904, featured an all-day festival, complete with a fireworks display. About 200,000 people attended, and it was said that the sounds of their revelry could be heard for miles.

And, just like that, Times Square had become the place to be on New Year’s. Huge parties followed in 1905 and 1906 as well, but city officials were getting upset by the midnight fireworks displays, which sent ash raining down on the city.

In 1907, they banned fireworks. The New Year’s Eve party would have to do without.

“Ochs was undaunted,” a Times Square website concludes. “He arranged to have a large, illuminated seven-hundred-pound iron and wood ball lowered from the tower flagpole precisely at midnight to signal the end of 1907 and the beginning of 1908.”

He hired metalworker Jacob Starr to make it.

U.S. Armed Forces members join the New York City Mayor in pressing the button to activate the ball drop (December 31, 2006).

But why a ball? The idea seems to have stemmed from a nautical device that was then more widely used. As early as 1833, England’s Royal Observatory at Greenwich, for example, began famously dropping a ball at precisely 1:00 p.m. each day, allowing captains of nearby ships to set their chronometers by it. Likewise, the Western Union Building in New York dropped a ball at noon each weekday.

“[The New Year’s Eve ball] was an adaptation of an old, useful thing,” Starr’s granddaughter mused decades later. “It was instantly popular. People just loved it.”

Indeed, the ball has been dropped in Times Square every New Year’s Eve since the 1907-08 party, with only two wartime exceptions. The tradition survived even after the Times moved its headquarters and sold the building.

There have been seven versions of the ball, but the current one weighs 11,875 pounds, and it has 2,688 crystal triangles illuminated by 32,256 LEDs.

Needless to say, the ball has come a long way from the 1908 version, which had only 100 light bulbs. What do you suppose the eighth version of the ball will look like someday?

Happy New Year, everyone!

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