How Times Square’s New Year’s Eve Ball Got Its Sparkle

The Times Square Ball has come far from its first iron-and-wood model. Here's how the New Year's Eve icon has evolved over the past century.

Every New Year's Eve, an estimated one million people gather in Times Square to watch the ball drop, with over a billion people tuning into the broadcast worldwide. While the Times Square Ball has become a staple in many a New Year's Eve tradition, you might not recognize the earliest iteration of the ball born in 1907. 

The New Year’s Eve Ball is now affixed with 2,688 crystal triangles bolted to 672 LED modules (32,256 LEDs) attached to an aluminum frame. Image (modified) used courtesy of the Times Square District Management Association

With roots in maritime timekeeping and its transformation into a symbol of celebration, the now LED-bedazzled ball is the perfect example of how innovation can reshape tradition. 

A History in Maritime Timekeeping

It might surprise you to learn that the Times Square Ball wasn’t invented to count down the New Year. In fact, modern adaptations of time balls—which date back to antiquity—were first developed some one hundred years earlier than the first Times Square Ball Drop in the early 19th century to solve a critical naval navigation problem. 

At sea, determining longitude required accurate timekeeping, but maintaining precise clocks was difficult without regular reference points. In 1829, Captain Robert Wauchope of the Royal Navy installed the first modern time ball in Portsmouth, England. It would drop at a specific time each day, visible from the harbor, so ships could synchronize their chronometers. This allowed captains to accurately plot their positions. These early time balls represented a breakthrough in maritime navigation.

In the 1850s, a time ball was mounted in the coastal town of Deal, England, to provide visual time signals for nearby ships in the English Channel. Image used courtesy of the Royal Observatory Greenwich 

By 1833, a time ball had been installed at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, London, dropping daily at 13:00 hours. Its success spread quickly; by 1845, major ports like Boston, San Francisco, and Sydney adopted the system. Though time balls became obsolete with the advent of radio time signals in the 20th century, their influence endured.

Time Balls in Times Square

The first New Year’s Eve celebration in Times Square was held in 1904, and the occasion was marked with a fireworks show on the southern roof of One Times Square, the headquarters of The New York Times. It wasn’t until New Year’s Eve 1907 that the first ball drop took place. Built from iron and wood, it was 4.9 feet in diameter, weighed nearly 700 lbs, and used 100 25-watt incandescent bulbs. Its simple construction made it functional but far less dazzling than today’s balls. 

An early adaption of the Times Square Ball. Image used courtesy of Ball Drop

The tradition borrowed the visual drama of maritime time balls to mark the year’s final seconds. From that moment on, it transformed an industrial concept into a cultural event. The ball drop has been held annually every year since, except in 1942 and 1943 in observance of World War II blackouts. 

The design of the Times Square Ball has changed several times over the years. In 1920, the ball was replaced with wrought iron, halving the ball’s weight to 400 lbs. This design change improved its durability and simplified its operation. Aluminum was introduced in 1955, reducing the weight to 150 lbs, making the ball easier to control and more resistant to adverse weather.

The ball has occasionally been redesigned for special events. For the “I Love New York” marketing campaign in the 1980s, for example, the ball was briefly transformed into an apple. In 2000, to welcome the new millennium, the ball was redesigned with 504 Waterford crystal panels, pyramid-shaped mirrors, and 96 strobe lights. 

Engineering the Modern Ball

The switch to LED lighting in 2007 revolutionized the Times Square Ball. LEDs enabled operators to precisely control color and brightness while significantly reducing energy consumption. The current ball, which is 12 feet in diameter and weighs nearly six tons, is illuminated by 32,000 LEDs and features 2,688 Waterford crystal triangles etched with unique patterns to refract light, creating stunning visual effects.

The Times Square Ball on New Year’s Eve 2022. Image (modified) used courtesy of Anthony Quintano via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

The ball’s structure must balance strength and weight in response to control inputs. Its frame is now made of lightweight aluminum. Those 32,000 LEDs can produce more than 16 million color combinations for vivid, programmable displays visible even in the dense crowd of New Year’s Eve revelers. Despite its size and brightness, the ball’s energy consumption is surprisingly efficient—comparable to the electricity used by a standard household oven.

And let’s not forget arguably the most important component: the timing mechanism that powers the ball drop. This technology guarantees that the ball begins its descent at exactly 11:59 p.m. and completes it at the stroke of midnight. The ball synchronizes with atomic clocks using GPS to ensure the timing is accurate down to the second. A closed-loop regenerative variable frequency drive (VFD) ensures the ball drops at a consistent speed over 60 seconds.

On the evening itself, everything is controlled by operators managing the ball drop from a control room on the 22nd floor of One Times Square, using a human-machine interface. Should the worst happen and these systems fail, there’s a less sophisticated fallback procedure: An operator can use a handheld local controller for manual operation!