New York City’s Times Square New Year’s Eve celebration first used a ball made with Waterford crystal in 2000.
The 2000 ball was created for the millennium celebration and introduced a more elaborate crystal design to the long-running ball-drop tradition. Waterford crystal became closely associated with later Times Square balls, whose panels reflect the event’s annual themes and visual designs.
This date is easy to confuse with the start of the tradition itself. The first Times Square ball was lowered in 1907, nearly a century earlier, and it was made from iron and wood rather than crystal. The 2000 milestone refers specifically to the introduction of Waterford crystal, not to the first ball drop or the first televised celebration.
Later balls became larger and more technically sophisticated, using LED lighting and thousands of crystal panels. The crystal panels are decorative components on the sphere; they do not make the ball a solid glass object. The ceremony remains a controlled lowering from One Times Square at midnight.