The very first Times Square Ball Drop was held atop the New York Times headquarters in 1907, starting a cherished tradition

One Times Square, the billboard-covered building at the intersection of Broadway, Seventh Avenue and 42nd Street in Midtown Manhattan, is the definitive place where one year turns into another.

Thousands of people every year suit around the building to watch the Times Square Ball Slowly descend past a pole marking the new year – a beloved tradition that began on this day in 1907. Viewers, including nearly a billion people watching on television, are witnessing a dazzling spectacle sponsored by companies looking to cash in on their New Year’s resolutions.

The marching band in Times Square started 120 years ago. Adolf Simon Ochsthe publisher and owner of the New York Times, wanted to increase publicity for his newspaper’s new headquarters at One Times Square. So when 1904 turned to 1905, the workers launched a pyrotechnic spectacle of the building.

“From base to dome,” the Times wrote, “the gigantic structure burned – a torch to usher in the newborn, a pyre for the old who pierced the heavens.”

The fireworks lasted only two more years. In 1907 Ochs hired a sign maker and advertiser Artkraft Strauss to build a ball of iron and wood weighing 700 pounds, five feet in diameter and covered with 100 light bulbs.

The first ball drop in Times Square was an exciting, if messy, success. On the night of December 31, crowds began pouring out of the subway station, the Times reported wrotewho, perhaps exaggerating, reported that its roar was heard as far north as Yonkers, more than ten miles up the Hudson River.

“Hurray for 1908,” the crowd cheered as the ball hit the post at midnight. When the Times went to press later that early morning, Times Square was littered with “broken horns, demolished and discarded rattles, dirty confetti, abandoned ticklers, and dented and abandoned derby hats.”

The history of time balls dates back to 1818, when future Royal Navy Admiral Robert Wauchope developed a visible signal to help ship crews reliably tell the time while at sea. Initially he tried flags, but settled on a ball coming down a pole at a certain time of day. In 1833 the Royal Observatory at Greenwich installed a time ball on the roof so that ships on the Thames could coordinate their times. Since then, every day at 12:55 p.m., the ball rises halfway up the mast, reaches the top at 12:58 p.m., and falls back down at exactly 1:00 p.m., delighting visitors to this day.

Ochs may have found inspiration for the Times Tower in a ball on top of the Times Tower Western Union Building in Manhattan’s financial district decreased every day at noon, synchronized via telegraph with the Naval Observatory in Washington, DC to ensure militaristic accuracy.

The ceremony at One Times Square has taken place every year since 1907, except for 1942 and 1943, when wartime eclipses prohibited excessive light and splendor. During that dark midnight, recordings of bells followed a moment of silence.

The Times left its flagship building in 1961 afterward to sell the structure into an advertising agency. Allied Chemical bought it in 1963 and stripped Ochs’ graceful building into a modernist glass skyscraper. Through countless negotiations and purchases since then, the Times Square ball has evolved, varying in weight, size and lighting. It was in the eighties became a red apple with a green stem to support a tourism campaign in New York.

After more than a century, the ball is today at its most lavish. According to his official websitethe “Big Ball” is covered with 32,256 LEDs. It has a diameter of 3.5 meters, weighs almost six tons and shines all year round.