It's about time they modernized Ye olde New Year's Ball in Times Square. The old ball looked like it came from one of the ballrooms at The Huntington Townhouse.
Besides more intricate colors, the new ball can also display video, which for now means an image of a flickering flame or the rippling stars and stripes of the American flag. That is a lot more than the old ball with its four colors, red, blue, green and white, could do.
The new ball weighs about 1,200 pounds and has 672 triangular Waterford crystal panels in a pattern the company calls "let there be light" on the inside and the outside to best reflect light. Additional pyramid-shaped mirrors on the ball's exterior capitalize on the crystal's refraction.
The old ball had 600 bulbs; the new one has 9,576 L.E.D.'s. The old ball's light level was 291,541 lumens; the new ball's level is 625,033 lumens.
But even though it is twice as bright, the new ball is easier on the environment. Each L.E.D. on the ball generates the same amount of light as one of last year's bulbs but uses 87 percent fewer watts. The net result is that the new ball will use about 15,000 watts compared to the old ball's 30,000 watts.
[Sci Fi Tech] via [New York Times]
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