Will you be married when the ball drops?
Many couples want to begin the new year as man and wife.
We celebrate you!
Here is some history of the Times Square New Year's Eve Ball,
for un-Wedding and New Year related reading!
Revelers began celebrating New Year's Eve in Times Square as
early as 1904, but it was in 1907 that the New Year's Eve Ball
made its maiden descent from the flagpole atop One Times Square.
The first New Year's Eve Ball, made of iron and wood and adorned
with one hundred 25-watt light bulbs, was 5 feet in diameter and
weighed 700 pounds. It was built by a young immigrant metalworker
named Jacob Starr, and for most of the twentieth century the
company he founded, sign maker Artkraft Strauss, was responsible
for lowering the ball.
As part of the 1907-1908 festivities, waiters in the fabled
"lobster palaces" and other deluxe eateries in hotels surrounding
Times Square were supplied with battery-powered top hats emblazoned
with the numbers "1908" fashioned of tiny light bulbs. At the stroke
of midnight, they all "flipped their lids" and the year on their
foreheads lit up in conjunction with the numbers "1908" on the
parapet of the Times Tower lighting up to signal the arrival of the
new year.
The Ball has been lowered every year since 1907, with the exceptions
of 1942 and 1943, when the ceremony was suspended due to the wartime
"dimout" of lights in New York City. Nevertheless, the crowds still
gathered in Times Square in those years and greeted the New Year with
a minute of silence followed by the ringing of chimes from sound trucks
parked at the base of the tower - a harkening-back to the earlier
celebrations at Trinity Church, where crowds would gather to "ring out
the old, ring in the new."
In 1920, a 400 pound ball made entirely of wrought iron replaced the
original. In 1955, the iron ball was replaced with an aluminum ball
weighing a mere 200 pounds. This aluminum Ball remained unchanged
until the 1980s, when red light bulbs and the addition of a
green stem converted the Ball into an apple for the "I Love New York"
marketing campaign from 1981 until 1988. After seven years, the
traditional glowing white Ball with white light bulbs and without
the green stem returned to brightly light the sky above Times Square.
In 1995, the Ball was upgraded with aluminum skin, rhinestones,
strobes, and computer controls, but the aluminum ball was lowered
for the last time in 1998.
For Times Square 2000, the millennium celebration at the Crossroads of
the World, the New Year's Eve Ball was completely redesigned by
Waterford Crystal. The new crystal Ball combined the latest in
technology with the most traditional of materials, reminding us of our
past as we gazed into the future and the beginning of a new millennium.
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