Times Square Time Ball Is 100 Years Old This New Year's Eve

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Most of the New Years Eve revelers in Times Square (and those watching by television at home) may take the time ball for granted. But the sphere is not merely a countdown device. It is 100 years old this year, and part of a complex history.

Let's start with the history of Times Square itself. According to the Eyewitness Travel Guide: New York (Eleanor Berman, main contributor), it was known as Longacre Square in the late 1800s. In those days, it was Manhattan's horse-trading center, with blacksmith shops and stables. Pickpockets lurked just outside the Square, in the shadows of "Thieves Lair."

After Oscar Hammerstein (father of the Broadway lyricist) built his Republic and Victoria theaters on Longacre Square in 1899, the spot was on its way to becoming New York's Theater District. The Great Depression started a tailspin that would end only with an official "clean-up" in the 1980s that once again attracted tourists and theatergoers to the neighborhood.

But it was in 1904 that Times Square got its present name, in honor of the 24-story New York Times Building. Fireworks sparked the building dedication on New Year's Eve that year.

The famous time ball first appeared at the top of the New York Times Building in 1907, and has made its slow descent every year since then (except for the war years of 1943 and 1944, when chimes rang instead, as a blackout precaution against German submarines). Pamela D. Greenwood ("Dropping the Time Ball" in Highlights for Children, January 2000) said that the Times Square ball is the only such device still operating in the United States.

Indeed, there were once many other time balls in the United States during the 19th century. Residents of larger cities depended on them to set their watches once a day.

Time balls brought some order to what had been a chaotic national situation. The United States had no standard time system until 1883, so before then local governments and businesses would set their clocks with noon marks (drawn on windowsills at the level of the noonday sun) or sundials.

Variance in the sun's apparent motion had caused differences across counties and even larger cities. Jewelers' shops had often claimed to display "the correct time," but in Kansas City, the clocks from store to store differed by as much as 20 minutes.

In 1845, the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C., set up the first time ball in this country, following the example of officials in a number of British ports. Other American cities soon had time balls of their own, and so began the everyday routine of dropping a sphere down a mast atop a tall building.

Time balls began in ports, but were made necessary by the railroads. As locomotives sped travel up in the 1800s, schedules for passengers and freight became tighter and more precise. Railroad companies adopted four time zones in 1883 (the same now in use in the contiguous United States), administered by the U.S. Naval Observatory. Every day at noon, cities in each time zone received a telegraph signal from the observatory, upon which to start their time balls. Clocks now agreed from block to block, and from city to city.

Radio spelled the end for time balls in the early 20th century. In 1967, the Naval Observatory sent its final time ball telegraph signal (to Seaman's Church Institute in New York City, whose ball had already become a quaint relic).

The time balls of the 1800s usually measured 3 to 4 feet in diameter, and were usually black (although Chicago's was red and Boston's copper in color). According to Olivia Barker ("New York Ready to Have a Ball" in USA Today, Dec. 31, 2001), the sphere at No. 1 Times Square is bigger (at 6 feet diameter and 1,070 pounds) and glitzier (faceted with 504 Waterford crystal triangles in 2001). Each recent New Year's celebration has brought about 500,000 revelers and $58 million into New York City.

Midnight of Jan. 1, 2000 and Jan. 1, 2001 (respectively, the popular and official beginnings of the New Millennium) saw brief revivals of the time ball at the Naval Observatory, in global coordination with other time balls in this country, the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Australia.