The First Times Square Ball Drop

The story as it is told

In the final 60 seconds of the year, a ball of light slides down a pole above Times Square while a crowd counts the seconds out. The story people tell is that it has always been this way. On the last night of 1907 the first ball went down the flagstaff of a New York tower, and the New Year's Eve ball drop was born: a glittering invention made for one night, repeated on the same tower, for the same party, every year since.

What we can confirm

New Year's Eve in Times Square began as a publicity event. On December 31, 1904, The New York Times celebrated its move into a new tower at Broadway, Seventh Avenue and 42nd Street. A year earlier the area had been Longacre Square, and the paper saw to the name change. According to the Times' own 2015 account, a band started at 11 p.m. Shortly before midnight a dynamite bomb went off as a warning signal and giant numerals reading 1-9-0-5 lit up on the parapet. A firework fired about 1,000 feet into the air told the crowd the year had turned. The Times wrote on its front page the next day: "From base to dome, the giant structure was alight." The Times Square Alliance, which runs the event today, says more than 200,000 people came, and that the noise could be heard, "it was said," in Croton-on-Hudson, 30 miles away.

The fireworks did not last. The Alliance says the city banned them two years later. The Times' 2015 account says only that the paper wanted "a less flammable way to signal the moment of midnight," noting that Adolph Ochs had borrowed heavily to build the tower. The solution was an iron-and-wood ball five feet across, carrying 100 25-watt bulbs, lowered down the flagstaff at midnight on December 31, 1907. The Alliance puts its weight at 700 pounds and credits a young immigrant metalworker, Jacob Starr, with building it.

The idea was not new. In 1845, at the request of the Secretary of the Navy, the US Naval Observatory put a time ball on its telescope dome in Washington. It dropped every day except Sunday at local mean solar noon, so residents could set their clocks and ships on the Potomac could check their chronometers. In New York, according to the Times, Western Union had dropped a three-and-a-half-foot time ball from its lower Broadway headquarters at noon every day since 1877, triggered by a signal from the Naval Observatory. Ochs moved the ritual from noon to midnight and from sailors to a crowd.

The Times' report of that first night, as the paper quoted it in 2015: "Tens of thousands stood watching the electric ball. And then - It fell." The crowd answered with a shout of "Hurrah for 1908." The paper named its electrician, Thomas P. Ward, as the man in charge that night and every year until 1957. The drop was skipped only for the New Years of 1943 and 1944 (the Dec 31, 1942 and Dec 31, 1943 celebrations), during the wartime dimout. The Alliance says crowds still came and marked midnight with a minute of silence and chimes played from sound trucks. A 400-pound wrought-iron ball replaced the first one in 1920, and a 150-pound aluminum ball took over in 1955.

The facts

• Dec 31, 1904: The Times' first New Year's celebration at its new tower; dynamite warning signal, 1-9-0-5 numerals, fireworks; front-page quote "From base to dome, the giant structure was alight." NYT Times Insider (Dunlap, 2015); Times Square Alliance
• First ball, Dec 31, 1907: iron and wood, 5 ft diameter, 100 25-watt bulbs, lowered down the flagstaff at midnight. NYT Times Insider; Times Square Alliance
• 700 lb; built by Jacob Starr. Times Square Alliance
• Western Union time ball, lower Broadway, daily at noon since 1877, triggered by a Naval Observatory signal. NYT Times Insider
• USNO time ball installed 1845 on the 9.6-inch telescope dome, dropped daily except Sunday at mean solar noon for Potomac ships. US Navy CNMOC, "A brief history of the U.S. Naval Observatory"
• Thomas P. Ward, Times electrician, in charge of the drop 1907-1957. NYT Times Insider
• No drop for the New Years of 1943 and 1944 (dimout); minute of silence and chimes instead. NYT Times Insider; Times Square Alliance
• 1920 wrought-iron ball (400 lb); 1955 aluminum ball (150 lb). Times Square Alliance

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