Counting down in Times Square

Each New Year's Eve, thousands of revelers gather at the intersection of Seventh Avenue, Broadway and 42nd Street in the heart of New York City's "Time Square" to count down the final moments of the year. Millions more watch the festivities on television. This annual tradition is something people look forward to each December, with many making pilgrimages from far and wide to stand outside for hours just to be at the crossroads of the world. According to the official website of Times Square, people began celebrating New Year's Eve in Times Square in 1904. However, it wasn't until 1907 that the New Year's Eve ball made its first descent from a flagpole atop One Times Square. The first ball was made of iron and wood and featured 100 25-watt light bulbs. Designed and operated by signmaker Jacob Starr, the initial ball weighed 700 pounds and was five feet in diameter. A ball has been lowered every year since 1907, except for in 1942 and 1943 in response to a wartime "dimout" of lights in NYC. Today's Time Square ball is much larger than its ancestor. The modern ball is a geodesic sphere, 12 feet in diameter, weighing 11,875 pounds. It's also covered with 2,688 crystal triangles that have a special sparkling pattern and are bolted to modules containing 32,256 LEDs. The Times Square ball was born out of the tradition of using a ball "dropping" to signal the passage of time. The first ball of this type was used at England's Royal Observatory at Greenwich in 1833, dropping at one o'clock every afternoon so that ship captains could set their chronometers.