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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?"
I lived in NYC for about 10 years, and not many people I know did. It's mostly a Big Media thing.
I hadn't known there were so many idiots in the world until I started using the Internet -Stanislaw Lem
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.
six tons in pounds ;)
Yup, Google is a cooler overlord than Yahoo ever was
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