Why a ball drops at New Year
Updated
Every New Year's Eve a lit ball slides down a pole above Times Square in the last minute of the year. The idea is older than the party: a falling ball was one of the world's first public time signals.
A signal for ships
In 1833 the Royal Observatory at Greenwich began dropping a ball down a mast on the roof of Flamsteed House at one o'clock every afternoon. The ball there today is bright red and keeps a fixed routine: at 12:55 it rises halfway, at 12:58 it rises to the top, and at 13:00 exactly it falls. The moment it drops is the signal: captains of ships on the Thames could set their chronometers by it, and so could anyone else in sight. Royal Museums Greenwich calls it one of the world's earliest public time signals. It still works, dropping at 13:00 GMT in winter and 13:00 BST in summer, and not at all when the wind is too strong.
In 1852 the Observatory added a second public signal: a clock at its gates, connected to its new Shepherd master clock and the first clock to show Greenwich Mean Time directly to the public. People came to check their watches against it. It is still there.
Balls around the world
According to the Times Square Alliance, which runs the New Year's Eve event, around 150 public time balls are believed to have been installed around the world after Greenwich, though few survive and still work. One still descends from a flagpole at noon each day at the United States Naval Observatory in Washington, DC.
Times Square, 1907
New Year's Eve in Times Square began in 1904, when The New York Times celebrated its new tower with an all-day street festival that ended in fireworks set off from the base of the building. Two years later the city banned the fireworks. The paper's owner, Adolph Ochs, arranged instead for an illuminated ball to be lowered from the tower's flagpole at midnight, marking the end of 1907 and the start of 1908. That first ball was made of iron and wood, 5 feet across, weighed 700 pounds and carried one hundred 25-watt bulbs. It was built by Jacob Starr, a young immigrant metalworker whose sign company lowered the ball for most of the twentieth century.
The ball since
The ball has been lowered every year since, except in 1942 and 1943, when New York's wartime dimout turned the lights off; the crowds came anyway and marked midnight with a minute of silence and chimes from sound trucks. It has been rebuilt many times: wrought iron in 1920, aluminium in 1955, red bulbs and a green stem to make an apple for the "I Love New York" campaign from 1981 to 1988, crystal for 2000, and LEDs in 2007. The current Constellation Ball, first shown in November 2025, is 12.5 feet across, weighs 12,350 pounds and carries 5,280 crystals and LED light pucks.
The same second on this board
The ball begins its descent at 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time. To count the last seconds with it, pick America/New_York: the board reaches zero at New York's midnight, 05:00 UTC on 1 January.
Sources
- The Greenwich Time Ball — Royal Museums Greenwich (first used 1833, daily sequence, one of the earliest public time signals, GMT/BST, wind)
- The Greenwich Time Ball and one time for all — Royal Museums Greenwich (ships on the Thames, Shepherd clock and gate clock, 1852)
- History of New Year's Eve & the Times Square Ball — Times Square Alliance (1904 celebration, fireworks ban, 1907 ball, Jacob Starr, 1942–43, later balls, Constellation Ball, time balls worldwide, 11:59 p.m. descent)