Everybody has heard about the New Year Ball Drop but how did this unique way of celebrating the start of a new year and why did it start? Every year billions of people come to watch this beautiful ball drop on the minute we transition into January 1 from the end of the year on December 31.

In the year of 1904, a man named Adolph Ochs, the publisher of Times, planned a New Year’s Eve party, to lure the citizens away from typical gatherings, he promised them a show of fireworks, he did this for the next two years. The third year he couldn’t get a permit so he installed a seven hundred pound sphere made entirely of wood and iron with a hundred 20 watt light bulbs and he got six men to lower it at midnight from a flagpole for the Yorkers. This enchanting tradition occurred every year attracting people from all over the world except for the two years, 1942 and 1943, because the States were fighting World War II. Ochs decided to chose the ball drop because in that era, people had to wind-up clocks to keep them running, so he decided to borrow the idea of dropping a ball to synchronize the time on every pocket watch, grandfather clock and any other time keeping device.

Today, the ball drop uses modern technology to drop the ball precisely instead of using dusty old stopwatches and six folks with ropes. The ball drops via a laser-cooled atomic clock in Colorado. Even though a lot has changed this Big Apple tradition has kept its charm and splendor.

 

 

 

Sources:

Pictures:

Adolph Ochs and the Ball: http://www.bigapplesecrets.com/2014/12/one-times-square-and-new-year-ball.html

Purple Ball: https://www.wikipedia.com

Info:

https://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/a-ball-of-a-time-a-history-of-the-new-years-eve-ball-drop

https://www.nypl.org/blog/2011/12/27/new-years-eve-ball-drop-times-square