New Year's Eve: History of New York City Times Square Dropping Ball

The first-ever celebration of New Year's Eve in Times Square in New York City was in 1904. Commemorating the official opening of the new headquarters of The New York Times, the event was the brainstorm of the newspaper's owner, German Jewish immigrant Alfred Ochs. He had successfully lobbied the city to rename Longacre Square, the area surrounding his publication's new home, in honor of his now famous newspaper. The then new and impressive "Times Tower" was situated on a tiny triangle of real estate at the intersection of 7th Avenue, Broadway and 42nd Street, and was at the time Manhattan's second-tallest building. The building was actually the tallest, if one counted the height measured from the bottom of its three massive sub-basements, built to handle the massive structural loading demands of The Times' modern printing equipment.

The New Year's celebration was planned as an all-day street festival, complete with a grand finale of fireworks set off from the base of the tower at midnight. There were over 200,000 attendees at this remarkable, high class and expensive New Year's Eve celebration. The Times' itself in their description of the occasion later pronounced "From base to dome the giant structure was alight - a torch to usher in the newborn year..."

City government, showing concern over the safety issues of the fireworks, two years later banned the pyrotechnic display. Ochs, not willing to give up a grand finale for his celebration, decided to have a time ball lowered from the tower flagpole during the waning minutes of the old year. A time ball is a large wooden or metal ball that drops at a predetermined, scheduled time. Time balls were originally made to enable sailors to check their marine chronometers from their ships while offshore. (Accurate timekeeping is one way of enabling mariners to accurately determine their longitude at sea.) The time ball Ochs had made was a large, 700 pound iron and wood ball, illuminated with 25 incandescent lights, that was lowered from the Times Tower flagpole at midnight to signal the end of 1907 and the beginning of 1908.

During the war years of 1942 and 1943, the illuminated descent of the time ball was cancelled due to the blackout regulations on the East coast. That did not deter the crowds, who still gathered. They observed a minute of silence at midnight, followed by the sounds of bell chimes emitting from truck mounted carillons parked at the base of the Tower.

Over the years many design changes have occurred to the Ball itself. Today, using modern LED (light emitting diode) technology, the ball is in itself an energy-efficient engineering marvel. In addition, for the first time in 2008, the ball was left in place to enable visitors to New York City to see the ball year round.

Today, New Year's Eve in Times Square is a genuine international phenomenon. Each year, around one million people still gather around the Tower, now known as One Times Square, and wait for hours in the New York winter cold for the famous Ball-dropping event. Satellite technology permits a worldwide audience estimated at over one billion people to watch the ceremony each year. Estimates put the United States audience at over 100 million during the New Years' Eve celebration. The dramatic dropping of the ball in Times Square, and the subsequent celebrations following, has become the undisputed symbol of the world's welcome to each New Year.

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Times_Square_Ball
http://www.timessquarenyc.org/nye/nye_history.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_ball
http://blog.insidetheapple.net/2008/12/times-square-ball-drop.html