If you watch the New Year’s festivities from New York, you know that they mark midnight with the dropping of a big, gaudy ball. You might assume this was just an arbitrary gimmick, but it turns out dropping balls has a place in the history of timekeeping, especially for ships at sea. The New York ball doesn’t work precisely the same, but it was clearly inspired by an ancient method of indicating the time.

Apparently, even the ancient Greeks used ball dropping to indicate time. But the modern ball got its start with [Captain Robert Wauchope], who installed one at Portsmouth, England, in 1829. The Royal Observatory in Greenwich got one in 1833, which you can see working in the video below.

The Problem to Solve

Ships need accurate timing for navigation purposes, so when you made harbor, you wanted to set your clocks in case they were a bit off. But if you were far from the nearby town, you might not be able to hear a clocktower bell or a cannon shot at noon. Even if you did, the speed of sound could be significant. The signal needs to be something visible and preferably something that can indicate that it is “almost” time to get people’s attention.

You want something tall so it can be easily seen. You also need something that clearly indicates the exact moment of the time mark, so that precludes something like raising or dropping a signal flag.

The Solution

[Wauchope’s] idea was to put a tower with a ball near a solar observatory with an accurate clock. Every day at noon, someone would sight the sun and determine the exact moment of noon, setting the accurate clock.

Then, at 1300, an hour later, you’d drop the ball. Everyone could set their clock to coincide with the ball drop. The moment the ball started falling was 1300.

About 1255, you’d raise the ball halfway. Around 1258, it would go to the top of the rod going through the center of the ball. The release would be at exactly 1300.

The American Take

Well, that’s not usually true in the United States. The first ball in the US was at the United States Naval Observatory in 1845. They would drop their ball at noon, exactly.

The Times Square ball first dropped on January 1, 1908. However, in another American difference, the stroke of midnight is when the ball reaches the bottom, not the instant it starts to drop.

End of the Ball

Of course, radio time signals made this technology obsolete. Still, there are about sixty balls still around, including many in Australia, the United Kingdom, and several scattered in other parts of the world. In the United States, you can find time balls at the Naval Observatory, the New York City Titanic Memorial, and the Plymouth Light in Massachusetts.

The Greenwich Time Ball located at the Royal Observatory in London still drops its ball every day at 1300, as you saw in the earlier video. The guide at Greenwich mentions that the expression “on the ball” relates to time balls, but we’ve also read it is a sports idiom, so we aren’t sure about that. Surprisingly, it isn’t the tallest Time Ball in England. That honor goes to the one in Hull, which, as you can see below, was recently restored and is once again operational. You can also watch a deep dive into the history of that particular ball.

Ships at sea have driven our time-keeping technology in many ways. Not to mention things like GPS or LORAN.

Featured image: “Working New Years Eve Social Media for NBC” by Anthony Quintano. Thumbnail: “Newyearseve loz batrch” by Alex Lozupone.