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Tech History Behind New York's New Year's Eve Ball
Toe, The writes "A perennial icon of New Year's Eve is the geodesic ball which first dropped in Times Square in 1907. Over the past century, there have been seven iterations of this ball. The first one, made out of iron and wood, weighed 400 pounds and sported one hundred 25-watt bulbs. The current ball weighs almost six tons and uses 32,256 Philips Luxeon Rebel LEDs. The designers expect there to be more tech improvements to the ball soon. What do you think of the ball and the bizarre status it holds in our culture? How would you change it for years to come?"
So what happened to the other 512?
Are they on a private network?
I hadn't known there were so many idiots in the world until I started using the Internet -Stanislaw Lem
I think it should be very round.
Growing up in Idaho, nobody particularly cared about the ball. Is this just an East Coast thing?
its the only way to be sure !
As a West-coaster, the ball seems stupid and pointless
In the future, the ball should float in the air just like my hover car.
Very little. Are there really no better stories to post at the moment?
So the current ball is... much lighter? Or is it heavier? If you're not going to use the metric system, at least use consistent units.
Yes yes, get off my lawn. Happy new year.
"A week in the lab saves an hour in the library"
It should drop and explode and 500 zerglings should pop out. It would be cool, because I live far away, and im sure our marines would have teched by then.
"Foley says it's a team of about six people who operate and take care of the ball year round."
They must be members of the Ball Handlers Union.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Six tons? What's it made of, depleted uranium?
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
I'm more surprised by How much weight the ball has gained in the past 30 years. The ball used through 1980 weighed only 150 pounds. Our newest iteration weights over eleven thousand pounds. I know plenty of people who have put on some weight lately, but I don't know anyone currently over the age of 30 who saw their own weight increase one-hundred fold in the past 30 years.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Get to it, engineers
What do you think of the ball and the bizarre status it holds in our culture?
None. It's a Dick Clark thing.
How would you change it for years to come?
For the exception of this comment, I have never thought of it nor will I ever. I don't give a shit. Of all the shit happening in my life, this low tech ball with light bulbs (LEDs? BFD!) is completely meaningless to me. Jan 1 is just another fucking date on the calendar.
Tonight, I'll watch a movie with my wife and then go to bed at 10PM and wake up tomorrow with the same fucking problems I have today. Valentines Day means more to me than this holiday.
From the linked article:
"On November 11th, 2008, The co-organizers of New Year’s Eve in Times Square (Times Square Alliance, Countdown Entertainment) unveiled a new Times Square New Year’s Eve Ball at a press conference at Hudson Scenic Studio in Yonkers, New York."
So the new ball already bounced around on two new year's eves. But hey, its about the history anyway.....
Watching a dropped ball was a historical way of setting a marine chronometer up and until the advent of radio signals. Pre 1920 watching a dropping ball was essential tech.
from :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_chronometer
It was common for ships at the time to observe a time ball, such as the one at Greenwich, to check their chronometers before departing on a long voyage. Every day, ships would anchor briefly in the River Thames at Greenwich, waiting for the ball at the observatory to drop at precisely 1pm.
...I wanted Snooki inside of it!
Just do the ball in CG. It's a made-for-TV event anyway. Going to Times Square on New Years Eve sucks.
I think it should be connected to tha intarweb and allow the world to tweet to it. The tweets then displayed on the surface. Censor filter at their discretion. lol. -AI
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion
They should make the next ball one big spherical LCD TV, so they can project whatever they want all the way around.
Loading...
Lasers!
I am not a crackpot.
That green I sunk in the corner pocket last week was a shot worthy of....eh? Oh a big lightbulb. Meh.
only if they're planning on taking out all the spectators.
I want to see the NY Yankees smash that ball to bits with their baseball bats while it's still plugged in. Cats and laz0rz is always welcome.
... a Death Star!
That's no moon!
Have gnu, will travel.
I'd use 1 to 3 high powered electrodeless fluorescent lighting tubes at the center of an empty ball, and have the skin of the sphere be made from some sort of light-diffusing glass or plastic. Electrodeless fluorescent lighting is very efficient and long-lasting.
Actually, come to think of it, since it used one day a year, so what if the light source has 100,000 hours of useful runtime? Damn this fixation on longevity and efficiency!
I would make each vertex of the geodesic sphere a tungsten electrode (cooled if necessary) and have fairly high powered plasma arcs flowing across the ball's surface, switching directions, forming patterns, and suchlike. The viewers should avoid staring too long.
The current ball weighs almost six tons and uses 32,256 Philips Luxeon Rebel LEDs.
Why are we buying LEDs from rebel scum?
What would I do to improve it?
Drop the damn thing. It's boring as hell watching it slowly slide down a big pole. Actually drop it like a gallows drop or a bungee jumper diving off.
100 25W light bulbs = 2500W
32256 Phillips Luxeon Rebel LEDs, 3V @ 350ma = approx 34kW, not counting the driver circuitry that the 25W bulbs didn't need.
Bring back the incandescent bulb!
original ball: 25 Watt Light bulbs
Now: Luxeon Rebel LEDs
It is the "luxeon rebel" part that really bothers me , indicative of the overwhelming pressure to put advertising everywhere at all times
Don't forget the New Year's Eve Ball's largest component: a decades-vacant One Times Square building.
Kriston
We could ignite a fusion reaction creating a miniature sun.
In the late 1800's, several cities in the Northeastern US had balls that were dropped at noon as defined by the electric time service. Time standards were distributed by a special telegraph line from an observatory in the Alleghenies.
A Shadeless room is a brighter room.
A construction job of that magnitude would require a hellova lot more manpower than the imperial army had to offer.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
and how much would it weigh if it was actually a dodecahedron with LEDs for facets?
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Is that you?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
of the new World Trade Tower right into one of the memorial pools, once its finally up.
THAT should show Bin Laden, eh?
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
The Times Square ball is a decorative and symbolic version of a practical time signaling system used at Greenwich Observatory, in which a large ball, visible from a long distance, was dropped rapidly under the force of gravity--not the slow, majestic descent of the Times Square ball. Apparently this system worked well because the ball could be released directly by electricity, and observed visually (no speed-of-sound delay). See the Wikipedia article time ball
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
>What do you think of the ball and the bizarre status it holds in our culture? How would you change it for years to come?
I think I liked slashdot a lot more back when every post didn't end in a stupid question.
High tech would be fluorescent lighting
Semaphore (near Port Adelaide, in metro Adelaide, South Australia) has a clock tower (not far from its -working- Merry-Go-Round... but I digress), with a time-ball that's still capable of working...
Before GPS's,the idea was to help synchronize ships' clocks (needed, then, for navigation)[before they left the area, by sea... :-)]
OK So you know that the Ball you have in Times Square is a representation of the Ball at Greenwich in London which descends twice everyday as an indication to all ships captains setting sail from London as the correct time. Hence Greenwich Mean Time which is the zero time zone for the world. So as for the ball being in YOUR culture, I have to take issue in a good natured and nah nah ne nah nah kinda way