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
Growing up in Idaho, nobody particularly cared about the ball. Is this just an East Coast thing?
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
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
This post contains no rudeness or derision of any kind. All arguments are friendly. Terms and exclusions may apply.
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!