A Time-Honored Tradition of Dropping the Ball

It’s a party for the century. The U.S. Naval Observatory will officially ring in the new millennium with an open-house celebration capped off by dropping a replica of its historic “time ball” from the observatory’s Main Building at the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve.

The Washington, D.C., time ball dates to 1845, when the city’s inhabitants and the ships on the Potomac needed to know the precise time. The observatory then was in the Foggy Bottom area, where it was easy to see from the river.

Every day, precisely at noon, the ball would drop. In the mid-1880s, the observatory moved to its present location on Massachusetts Avenue, near the British Embassy. The time ball, however, was relocated to the Old Executive Office Building, where it continued to be dropped every day until 1936, says Steven Dick, an astronomer with the observatory. That time ball hasn’t been seen since. Some speculate the ball, a wooden frame wrapped in canvas, was simply discarded.

“Everyone knows about the ball in Times Square,” says Dick. “They don’t realize that it was a historical method for disseminating time. . . . Their time ball was originally synchronized from here.”

The present-day ball is 4 feet in diameter and made of aluminum.

Secretary of the Navy Richard Danzig will give the order to drop the ball this New Year’s Eve, and its descent will trigger a cannon shot to re-create other means to disseminate time. It will be followed by a fireworks display.

The U.S. Naval Observatory, which maintains the Master Clock of the United States, is also reactivating its around-the-world time ball drop, successfully carried out last New Year’s Eve at 20 sites in eight countries on six continents. As the new millennium sweeps around the world beginning at the International Date Line, the drops will be coordinated with the Global Positioning System of satellites, for which the Naval Observatory provides the time.

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Anyone interested in obtaining more information can call (202) 762-1467 or visit the Web site https://www.usno.navy.mil.