The Times Square Ball is a time ball (a ball dropped at a certain time) at the top of the One Times Square building in Times Square in New York City. It is used as part of the New Year's Eve celebration held yearly in Times Square. Every December 31 at 11:59 p.m. EST, the ball is lowered 141 feet (43 m) from a flagpole, reaching the bottom at midnight to signal the start of a new year. The first ball drop took place on 1907 and it has been dropped every year since then.

History 

 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  and measuring  in diameter. At first, it dropped 10 seconds before midnight.
 1913 – 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 .
 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; 1989 - 1995 – The Ball gets replaced with a lighter version made from aluminum weighing .
 1981 - 1988 – The ball has red light bulbs and a green "stem" alluding to The Big Apple, New York's nickname.
 1990 – The ball's white bulbs were replaced by red, white, and blue bulbs to salute the troops of Operation Desert Shield.
 1995 – The Ball gets computerized, aluminum coated, rhinestone, and has a strobe light system.
 2000 – The Ball gets an overhaul for the new millennium celebrations with a design from Waterford Crystal and new technology.  It weighed  measured  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 "Star of Hope", "Hope for Abundance", "Hope for Healing", "Hope for Courage", "Hope for Unity", "Hope for Wisdom", "Hope for Fellowship", and "Hope for Peace".  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 gets a makeover in honor of its 100th Anniversary. The ball is still a Waterford Crystal ball as in the millennial ball (described above), but brand new state of the art LED lighting provided by Philips is 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. The New Year's Eve 2008 ball has been redesigned by a New York City lighting design firm called Focus Lighting.  The ball's weight is .
 2009 - present – The 2008 design is maintained, but is 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  and is now  in diameter. The flag pole on the top of One Times Square that the ball is hoisted atop was rebuilt and enlarged to accommodate the ball. When raised it is now placed  above Times Square. Yearly themes for the ball's crystal panels continued. The numerical sign indicating the year (which remains atop the tower along with the ball itself) uses Philips LED lamps.
 2009 - 2013 – The ball contained crystal patterns that were part of a Waterford series known as "World of Celebration".
 2014 – All the ball's panels were replaced, marking a new theme series known as "Greatest Gifts". The "14" numerals used Philips Hue multi-color LED lamps, allowing them to have computerized lighting cues.
 2020 – .Due to the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City, the 2020–21 festivities were closed to the public. Attendance was limited to the invited families of essential workers from the New York City area ("the Heroes of 2020"), performers, and members of the media. In accordance with New York state health orders, face masks were mandatory, and households were placed within  "pens" with social distancing.
 2021 – .On November 16, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that the event would be held as normal for 2021–22, but with all attendees required to present proof of vaccination for COVID-19 and valid photo identification. If covered by specific exemptions, unvaccinated attendees may alternatively present proof of a recent negative PCR test from within the past 72 hours; unvaccinated attendees will be required to wear a face mask. Despite a rapidly increasing number of cases in the city and state tied to the Omicron variant (which has notably led to the suspension of several Broadway shows due to COVID-19 issues within casts and crew, and the reimplementation of a state mask mandate for indoor public spaces that do not require patrons to be vaccinated), de Blasio stated on December 16 that they were monitoring the situation, but emphasized "the great advantage" of the event being held outdoors with only vaccinated attendees, and that "if at any point we need to alter the plan, we will".

Weather at midnight 
According to National Weather Service records the average temperature during the ball drop in nearby Central Park has been . The warmest ball drops occurred in 1965–66 and 1972–73 when the temperature was . The coldest ball drop occurred in 1917–18, when the temperature was  and the wind chill was . Affected by a continent-wide cold wave, the 2017–18 drop was the second-coldest on record, at  and   after wind chill. The third coldest ball drop occurred during the 1962–63 event, when the temperature was  and the wind chill was . Snow has fallen seven times, with the earliest being the 1926–27 event, and the most recent being the 2009–10 event, and rain/drizzle has fallen sixteen times, with the earliest being the 1918–19 event, and the most recent being the 2018–19 event. The snowiest ball drop occurred during the 1948–49 event, when four inches of snow fell, and the rainiest occurred during the 2018–19 event, when 1.02 inches of rain fell.

Broadcasting 
As a public event, the festivities and ball drop are often broadcast on television. A host pool feed is provided to broadcasters for use in coverage. Since 2008–09, an official webcast of the ball drop and its associated festivities has been produced, streamed via Livestream.com.

The event is covered as part of New Year's Eve television specials on several major U.S. television networks, which usually intersperse on-location coverage from Times Square with entertainment segments, such as musical performances (some of which held live in Times Square as part of the event). By far the most notable of these is Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve; created, produced, and originally hosted by the entertainer Dick Clark until his death in 2012 and currently hosted by Ryan Seacrest, the program first aired on NBC in 1972 before moving to ABC, where it has been broadcast ever since. New Year's Rockin' Eve has consistently been the most-watched New Year's Eve special in the U.S. annually, peaking at 25.6 million viewers for its 2017–18 edition.

Across the remaining networks, Fox has occasionally broadcast its New Year's specials from Times Square. Spanish-language network Univision broadcasts ¡Feliz!, hosted by Raúl de Molina of El Gordo y La Flaca. On cable, CNN carries coverage of the festivities, known as New Year's Eve Live, currently hosted by Anderson Cooper and Andy Cohen (the latter first replacing Kathy Griffin for 2018). Fox News carries All-American New Year, which was most recently hosted by Elisabeth Hasselbeck and Bill Hemmer from Times Square.

References

Other websites
 
 New Year's Eve on the Times Square Alliance website

Manhattan
Times Square
New Year