About That New Year’s Eve Times Square Ball Drop

We’ve devised many weird ways to celebrate the instant the clock turns 12 on New Year’s Eve. I’ve been to a flip-flop drop, a giant blue crab drop, and a few other small-town Americana versions of the traditional New Year’s Eve celebration. Of course, the one that gets all the TV coverage is the Times Square Ball Drop in New York City, where they de-elevate a giant crystal ball filled with lights to mark the precise moment a new year begins. Before we get into the fun stuff, let’s be real. There’s no dropping going on here; it’s more like lowering with extreme care. That party decoration is expensive, valued at over $1 million.

Drop It Like It’s Weird

The Times Square giant Waterford Crystal Ball is pretty tame when you start looking at some of the other things we drop in various parts of the country. Some items pair, as you might expect, with the local culture. Memphis drops a giant guitar, Nashville drops a giant Musical note, and Atlanta, Georgia drops a giant peach. Considering the city has 71 streets with variants of the Peachtree name, no one is surprised by the peach theme.

Boise, Idaho, drops a giant potato, while Orlando goes with their stereotypical orange. Miami adds a bit of style using a giant orange wearing sunglasses. Must be a South Beach orange.

From here, things start to get weird.

Mobile, Alabama, uses a giant Moon Pie.

Lebanon, Pennsylvania drops bologna. Yes, really. No word on whether the bologna has a first name.

Las Cruces, New Mexico, goes with the ever-popular chili pepper.

Eastport, Maine, drops a giant sardine.

When you stop to contemplate the possibilities, you won’t be surprised that Key West, Florida, takes the prize. Multiple drops throughout the town include a giant conch and a SMART car-sized high-heeled red shoe, complete with drag queen inside for the ride down. To top things off, Schooner Wharf Bar organizes the lowering of a pirate wench.

About the Times Square Ball Drop

This has been going on for a long time. While the partying tradition began years earlier, the first big ball fell in New York in 1907. Made from iron and wood, it was powered with festive 25-watt lights. Those are less powerful than the ones in your oven. Hey, electricity hadn’t been around all that long, so I’m still impressed, especially with its five-foot diameter and 700-pound weight.

Over the years, ball designers made logistics easier with lighter balls. In 1920, the ball went all iron, which you might think would be heavier, but it only tipped the scales at “just” 400 pounds. In the mid-50s, aluminum replaced iron, and the ball slimmed down to a cool buck fifty.

For the 2000 celebration, Waterford Crystal and Philips Lighting collaborated on a complete redesign, going with something much closer to today’s sparkly design. In 2007, the 100th anniversary of the New York Ball Drop, the companies came up with a doozy, leading to the “permanent” (or permanent until the next redesign) of the ball we use today.

The Modern New Years Ball

What you’ll see in the last moments of 2023 and the first moments of 2024 is a genuine whopper. The Waterford and Philips ball is 12 feet in diameter and weighs in just shy of six tons at 11,875 pounds.

There are 2,688 Waterford Crystal triangles defining the surface. They’re comprised of different sizes and designs. Upon close inspection, you’ll see crystal designs symbolizing various “gifts,” including, but not limited to, love, happiness, goodwill, wonder, serenity, harmony, and more.

Under those crystals are 32,256 LED lights with equal numbers of red, blue, green, and white. Those lights can create an overall color palette of over 16 million shades.

The Origin of Balls

This isn’t all frivolity, you know. Back in the day, many port cities used prodigious dropping balls to publicly communicate a point in time so ships could calibrate their onboard clocks. Knowing the precise time was essential to their ability to calculate longitude. Without that, sailors were, by definition, lost at sea the moment they ventured past the sight of land. There’s a great book about that, by the way—a highly recommended read.

Happy New Year to you all, and enjoy your random object drop! Let me know if you have a weird one in your town so we can poke fun at it next year.