The first official Times Square New Year's Eve ball was lowered to welcome 1908.
The event took place at midnight between December 31, 1907, and January 1, 1908. Adolph Ochs, publisher of The New York Times, arranged the celebration to promote the newspaper's new headquarters at One Times Square. The ball was lowered from a flagpole after fireworks had been prohibited there.
The original ball was built from iron and wood, measured about five feet in diameter, and was illuminated by 100 incandescent bulbs. Its descent created a visual countdown that crowds could follow, establishing a tradition that continued in later years.
The event has sometimes been dated incorrectly as 1907 because the ball was first lowered on December 31 of that year. The year it welcomed, however, was 1908. The ball drop later paused during World War II blackouts in 1942 and 1943, when a moment of silence replaced the illuminated descent.