Each year on New Year’s Eve celebration in Times Square in Manhattan, New York City, a time ball made of crystal and electric lights is raised to the top of a pole on the One Times Square building 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 12:00 am. Toshiba's Times Square billboard directly below the Ball counts down to midnight as well.
Every year up to one million people gather in Times Square to watch the Ball drop, and an estimated 1 billion watch video of the event, 100 million of them in the United States.
History
See also: Time ball
- 1904 – The New York Times opens its new headquarters on Longacre Square (the city's second tallest building), and persuades the city to rename the triangular "square" for the newspaper. Owner Adolph Ochs initiates a massive celebration in the square for New Year's, which is so popular (200,000 came) it permanently displaces the celebration from Trinity Church. There is no ball, but there are fireworks.
- 1907 – Walter F. Palmer, chief electrician for The Times, creates the first New Year’s Eve Ball in response to the behest of publisher Adolph Ochs to create some kind of spectacular midnight show that would draw attention to the Square. The New Year’s Eve Ball first descended from a flagpole at One Times Square, constructed with iron and wood materials with 100 25-watt bulbs weighing 700 pounds (320 kg) and measuring 5 feet (1.5 m) in diameter. At first, it dropped 1 second after midnight.
- 1914 – The Times relocates to 229 W. 43rd St., but the celebration continues.
- 1920 – The Ball was replaced with an iron material Ball and weighing less than the original, only 400 pounds (180 kg).
- 1942 – 1943 – During World War II, the descending of the Ball was stopped due to wartime lighting restrictions in case of enemy attack. Celebrants observed a moment of silence at midnight, followed by chimes.
- 1955-1980 – The Ball gets replaced with a lighter version made from aluminum weighing 150 pounds (68 kg).
- 1981-1988 – Due to the I Love New York campaign, there are red light bulbs and green stem in a design of an apple.
- 1989-1994 – The traditional white bulbs again get put on the Ball.
- 1995-1998 – The Ball gets computerized, aluminum coated, rhinestone, and has a strobe light system.
- 1999 – The aluminum Ball gets replaced.
- 2000-2007 – The Ball gets an overhaul for the new millennium celebrations with a design from Waterford Crystal and new technology. It weighed 1,070 pounds (490 kg) measured 6 feet (1.8 m) in diameter and installed with 504 crystal triangles, illuminated externally with 168 halogen light bulbs and internally with 432 light bulbs of clear, red, blue, green and yellow colors. Each year there is a theme in the Waterford crystal concept with a particular chunk of designed crystals being called something, and in previous years there have been for example “Hope for Fellowship,” “Hope for Wisdom,” “Hope for Unity,” “Hope for Courage,” “Hope for Healing,” “Hope for Abundance,” etc. There are strobe lights and mirrors to create bursts of excitement and special effects for the audience.
- 2008 – For New Year's Eve 2008, the ball got a makeover in honor of its 100th Anniversary. The ball is still a Waterford Crystal ball as in 2000-2007 (described above), but brand new state of the art LED lighting provided by Philips was featured instead of the less efficient halogen bulbs. The new LED fixtures produce over 16.7 million colors and can be programmed to create special effects. Waterford Crystal has redesigned the crystal to feature a new "Let There Be Light" crystal design. The ball featured 9,567 energy-efficient bulbs that consume the same amount of electricity as only ten toasters. The New Year's Eve 2008 ball was redesigned by a New York City lighting design firm called Focus Lighting. The ball's weight was 1,212 pounds (550 kg).
- 2009 – The new Times Square New Years Eve Ball has now doubled in size and is 20% more energy efficient than the previous one. The new ball, a 3-frequency icosahedral geodesic sphere, incorporates 3500 lighting cues designed by Focus Lighting, Inc. The new ball weighs 11,875 pounds (5,386 kg) and is now 12 feet (3.7 m) in diameter. The flag pole on the top of One Times Square that the ball is hoisted atop has been rebuilt and now enlarged to accommodate the ball. When raised it will now be 475 feet (145 m) above Times Square. And for the first time in its 101 year history, after New Years Eve, it will remain up all year round, raised halfway up the mast as of January 6.
Weather at midnight
The average temperature at midnight in New York City since the ball dropping tradition began in 1907 is 33.7 °F (1 °C).
The coldest event was in 1917 when the temperature was just 1 °F (-17 °C), the second coldest was 11 °F (-12 °C) in 1962. The warmest ball drop was 58 °F (14 °C) in both 1965 and 1972. It has snowed during the ball drop just six times out of 103 events, 1926, 1934, 1948, 1952, 1961, 1967 and it has rained multiple times. During the most recent ball drop, 2009, the temperature was 18 °F (-7 °C) and 2 °F (-16 °C) factoring in wind chill, which is well below the average.
Crowd control
Up to one million people go to watch the ball drop each year. Therefore, New York Police Department (NYPD) must have strict control over the crowd so as to prevent crushes and stampedes. The technique used by NYPD is to divide Times Square up into sections, commonly referred to as "pens." As people arrive, usually in the afternoon, they are directed into the pens. NYPD starts with the pens closest to 43rd Street, and as those pens get full, closes them to further people and works their way back toward Central Park. Once inside the pen, people may leave, but will not be able to reenter the pen.
Also, access to Times Square is extremely limited during the course of the celebration. Those staying in hotels in the area need to prove to NYPD that they are in fact guests at those hotels. Also, no alcoholic beverages are permitted (as per NYC's open container laws), and there are no portable public restrooms available.
Television
Several networks have aired coverage of the Times Square Ball Drop; as the event is held in the public square there is no rights or exclusive coverage. Most notable is ABC's Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve with Ryan Seacrest, hosted for 35 years by Dick Clark and recently joined by Ryan Seacrest after Clark suffered a stroke in 2004, as well as a West Coast segment hosted by singer Fergie.
NBC also has coverage of the events under the name New Year's Eve with Carson Daly, hosted in recent years by Carson Daly; previously a special edition of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno (and before that, The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson) would air in this slot, but Leno has since ceded hosting duties to Daly, who hosts more conventional coverage.
FOX also has its own coverage of the New Year's Eve event, New Year's Eve Live , which started in 2004–05 in an attempt to capitalize on Clark's stroke. Ryan Seacrest hosted the first year; in 2005–06, Regis Philbin (who had filled in for Clark on ABC the year prior) took over as Seacrest went to ABC. Fox's coverage is currently hosted by Spike Feresten; he was joined by Cat Deeley in 2007-08 and Mark Thompson in 2008-09. Fox complements the Times Square coverage with U Party With Fox News, which airs live in all time zones on sister network Fox News Channel and is hosted by Fox News anchors.
For many years CBS was known for its coverage of the ball drop featuring Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians band (he had done so on CBS Radio Network since 1928 and on TV since 1956), live from The Waldorf-Astoria Hotel and featuring the now famous rendition of Auld Lang Syne. Lombardo died in November 1977; the Royal Canadians did the show with Victor Lombardo substituting for his late older brother for 1977-78 but would disband after that. The broadcasts continued under the name Happy New Year, America beginning in 1978-79, still live from the Waldorf-Astoria (with taped segments added from Billy Bob's in Texas and Walt Disney World), with various guest hosts (among them Andy Williams, Brent Musburger, Gladys Knight, Christie Brinkley, Natalie Cole, Kermit the Frog and Lily Tomlin in character as "Ernestine the Telephone Lady"). The last broadcast was in 1995–96 and featured Montel Williams as host; in 1996, Disney pulled out of producing the program (and several other CBS holiday specials) when it bought ABC, and CBS decided to discontinue its New Year's coverage. CBS no longer covers the ball drop and instead opts for reruns of Late Show with David Letterman. Some CBS affiliates show local ball drops instead.
CNN and MTV have also carried coverage of the f
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