Page 18 - IAV Digital Magazine #609

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The Times Square ball first dropped in 1904, and it came into being thanks to Jacob Starr, a Ukranian immigrant and metalworker, and the former New York Times publisher, Adolph Ochs. The latter had suc- cessfully drawn crowds to the newspaper’s skyscraper home in Times Square with pyrotechnics and fireworks to celebrate the forthcoming year, but city officials banned explosives from being used after just a few years of the festivities.
So Ochs commissioned Starr, who worked for sign- making firm Strauss Signs (later known as Artkraft Strauss, a company at which Starr served as president), to create a new visual dis- play.
Over the past century, that display, and symbol of the New Year has evolved from a iron and wood cage adorned with light bulbs to a dazzling technicolor crystal sphere.
Their concept was based on time balls, nautical devices that had gained popularity in the 19th century. As time- telling became more precise, ship navigators needed a
standardized way to set their chronometers. Each day, harbors and observatories would raise and lower a metal ball at the same time to allow sailors to synchro- nize their instruments.
Both Ochs and the New York Times’ chief electrician, Walter Palmer, have been credited with the idea, allegedly inspired by the downtown Western Union Building, which dropped a time ball each day at noon. But Starr’s granddaughter Tama, who joined Artkraft Strauss in 1982 and now owns the business, said in a phone interview that she believes it was her grandfa- ther who came up with the concept of the ball being lowered and lit up with the new year numerals at mid- night.
“The idea was to ... have it illuminated with the brand- new electricity that had just come up to the neighbor- hood,” said Tama, who for many years served as foreperson at the Times Square ball drop. “And it was lowered by hand ... starting at one minute to midnight, and that was the way it was done for many years.”
“It was an adaptation of an old, useful thing,” she added. “It was instantly popular. People just loved it.”
Though Manhattan had been partially illuminated by elec- tricity since the early 1880s, the US National Park Service (NPS) notes that half of American homes were still lit by gas lights and candles until the 1920s. The sight of a glimmering ball lowering down from the dark skies would have seemed otherworldly.
When the ball reached the parapet with a sign display- ing the numbers of the year, “the electrician would throw the switch, turning off the ball and turning on the num- bers at the same time,” Tama said. “So it looked like the ball coming down trans- formed into the set of num- bers.”
All of Times Square got in on the theatrics. In the first year, waiters in nearby restaurants and hotels wore battery-pow- ered “1908” top hats that they illuminated at the stroke of midnight.
“It looked like magic to peo- ple,” said Tama.
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