Slashdot Mirror
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
"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
"dropping of the big spud"
In Eugene Oregon where I grew up, we had the "lighting of the big joint", but a few years back they updated the technology to the "torching of the big bowl" with a giant 10 foot tall water bong. It's an Oregon thing...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Also, why is it dropping? What's that symbolic of?
The US dollar?
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
Nothing worse than in the Midwest where we're only delayed an hour and yet we watch the ball go down in NY and then wait through an hour of more after-ball-dropped third string acts to see the ball drop again. God it's painful.
What kind of twisted masochist are you that watches that stupid thing more than once? Don't you have anything else on the TV where you live? Gillagan's Island reruns? Hell man, you could log into Slashdot. Even that would be better. You need help.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!