On Sunday, workers installed 192 Waterford crystal triangles on Times Square’s New Year’s Eve ball, The glittering Times Square ball is a 12-foot geodesic sphere with more than 2,600 crystal triangles. Every year, some of the crystals are swapped, resulting in new features to reflect the coming new year.
This year, the nearly 12,000-pound ball is featuring a new “Gift of Happiness” design represented by a sunburst of bright cuts radiating outward, according to the Associated Press. The blazing ball with 32,256 LED lights will be dropped at 11:59 p.m. ET on New Year’s Eve to ring in 2021.
Due to the coronavirus pandemic, Times Square and the surrounding streets will be completely closed off to the public. The organizers of the ball drop, Times Square Alliance and Countdown Entertainment, have pre-selected 40 essential workers and their families to watch the celebrity performances and ball drop in person.
The families will be in separate socially distanced pens, according to Spectrum News 1. The guests of honor include a grocery store clerk, a COVID-19 tester, and a teacher. Elia Pacheco teaches second grade. She said 2020 has been tough and that she is happy it is ending.
A celebration lasting 116 yeats
Times Square will be much, much quieter this year on December 31. What will be missing is the over 40,000 spectators usually in attendance. Only two times in the past has Times Square been empty on New Year’s Eve, and that was in 1942 and 1943 in observance of wartime blackouts.
The very first ball drop was held on December 31, 1907, to welcome 1908, The event was organized by Adolph Ochs, the owner of The New York Times newspaper. Today’s Waterford Crystal ball is a far cry from the very first ball, designed by Artkraft Strauss, a sign manufacturer located in Manhattan, New York. The company was founded in 1897 by artisan Benjamin Strauss.
But improvements in lighting technology over the past 100 or so years has prevailed – and the first ball, constructed from wood and iron, and lit with 100 incandescent light bulbs has been transformed into a computerized LED lighting system, with an outer surface consisting of triangular crystal panels.
Online viewing
The Times Square 2021 Webcast will begin at 6 PM ET on December 31, 2020, and end at 12:15 a.m. ET on January 1, 2021. The show will be streamed live on multiple websites, including TimesSquareNYC.org, NewYearsEve.nyc, Livestream.com/2021, and TimesSquareBall.net.
