The first New Year's Eve ball drop was held in Times Square
On this day · 31 December 1907
After the city banned his rooftop fireworks, a newspaper publisher lowered a 700-pound lit ball instead — and a tradition was born.
On December 31, 1907, a glowing 700-pound ball of iron and wood slid down the flagpole atop One Times Square to mark the arrival of 1908 — the first New Year’s Eve ball drop.
The stunt was a fallback. Adolph Ochs, publisher of the New York Times, had been celebrating his paper’s new headquarters with rooftop fireworks until the city banned them. Undaunted, he commissioned a 5-foot ball studded with one hundred 25-watt bulbs, built by immigrant metalworker Jacob Starr, and had it lowered precisely at midnight.
The idea borrowed from maritime “time balls” once dropped so sailors could set their chronometers. More than a century later the ceremony has repeated every year but two — wartime dimouts darkened 1942 and 1943 — growing from a publicity stunt into a tradition watched by crowds worldwide.
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