Tech History Behind New York's New Year's Eve Ball 106
Toe, The writes "A perennial icon of New Year's Eve is the geodesic ball which first dropped in Times Square in 1907. Over the past century, there have been seven iterations of this ball. The first one, made out of iron and wood, weighed 400 pounds and sported one hundred 25-watt bulbs. The current ball weighs almost six tons and uses 32,256 Philips Luxeon Rebel LEDs. The designers expect there to be more tech improvements to the ball soon. What do you think of the ball and the bizarre status it holds in our culture? How would you change it for years to come?"
32256 LEDs? (Score:5, Funny)
So what happened to the other 512?
Are they on a private network?
Say, whaaaa? (Score:5, Funny)
They must be members of the Ball Handlers Union.
Re:Just the east coast? (Score:5, Funny)
"dropping of the big spud"
In Eugene Oregon where I grew up, we had the "lighting of the big joint", but a few years back they updated the technology to the "torching of the big bowl" with a giant 10 foot tall water bong. It's an Oregon thing...
Re:Just the east coast? (Score:5, Funny)
Also, why is it dropping? What's that symbolic of?
The US dollar?
Re:Say, whaaaa? (Score:5, Funny)
No, I'm pretty sure the TSA is not involved in any way.
Re:32256 LEDs? (Score:5, Funny)
Those addresses were lost to subnetting.
Re:Dumb (Score:5, Funny)
Nothing worse than in the Midwest where we're only delayed an hour and yet we watch the ball go down in NY and then wait through an hour of more after-ball-dropped third string acts to see the ball drop again. God it's painful.
What kind of twisted masochist are you that watches that stupid thing more than once? Don't you have anything else on the TV where you live? Gillagan's Island reruns? Hell man, you could log into Slashdot. Even that would be better. You need help.