Times Square Ball

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The Times Square Ball on display before New Year's Eve, beginning the 2008 year.

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 meters) over the course of a minute, coming to a rest at the bottom of its pole at 12:00am. 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.^[1]

1 History
2 Crowd control
3 Television
4 Other ball drops
5 References
6 External links

[edit] History

See also: Time ball

The descent of a time ball each New Year’s Eve is a ritual derived from a common visual synchronization procedure once used primarily for navigation and astronomy. This practice evolved long before the age of electronic communications, but after mechanical timekeeping had reached a high degree of accuracy. In 1829 the first time ball was installed in England for visually synchronizing the chronometers used in navigation.

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.^[2]

1907 – 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 (318 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.^[2]

1920 – The Ball was replaced with an iron material Ball and weighing less than the original, only 400 pounds (181 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.^[2]

1955 – The Ball gets replaced with a lighter Ball 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 – The traditional white bulbs again get put on the Ball.

1995 – The Ball gets computerized, aluminum coated, rhinestoned, and has strobe light system.

1999 – The aluminum Ball gets replaced.

2000 – 2006 – The Ball gets an overhaul for the new millennium celebrations with a design from Waterford Crystal and new technology. It weighs 1070 pounds (485 kg), measures six 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.

2007 – For New Year's Eve 2007, the ball got a makeover in honor of its 100th Anniversary. The ball is still a Waterford Crystal ball as in 2000-2006 (described above), but brand new state of the art LED lighting provided by Philips is being 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 features 9,567 energy-efficient bulbs that consume the same amount of electricity as only ten toasters.^[1] The New Year's Eve 2007 ball was redesigned by a New York City lighting design firm called Focus Lighting. The current weight is 1,212 lbs.

[edit] Crowd control

Up to a 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 dividing Times Square up into sections, commonly referred to as "pens." As people arrive, usually in the afternoon, people are directed into the pens. NYPD starts with the pens closest to 43rd Street, and as these pens get full, NYPD closes these pens 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 with NYPD that they are in fact guests at these hotels. Also, no alcoholic beverages are permitted (as per NYC's open container laws), and there are no portable public restrooms available.

[edit] 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^[3], 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 host and performer, which changes each year and is usually female.

NBC also has coverage of the events under the name New Year's Eve with Carson Daly, hosted in recent years by Carson Daly^[4]; 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, 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. In 2007-08 the coverage was hosted by Cat Deeley and Spike Feresten. 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.

[edit] Other ball drops

The Times Square ball drop is not the only New Year's Eve ball drop in the United States. The claim to the second-largest ball drop in the country is held by the 97 Rock Ball Drop^[5]^[6] of Buffalo, New York. This ball drop began in 1988 and has since become a Buffalo tradition. An estimated 40,000 spectators watch the ball drop live from the Electric Building on Roosevelt Square in Buffalo, and the event has been telecast annually in synchronized split screen with New Year's Rockin' Eve on WKBW-TV since its inception. The Peach Drop of Atlanta, Georgia boasts a similarly sized celebration.

In addition, other smaller towns have conducted drops, or raisings, of objects on New Year's Eve. The act is particularly popular in Pennsylvania.

Further information: List of objects dropped on New Year's Eve