Last night marked the 117^th time the ball has dropped in New York's Times Square. The tradition started in 1097 and has been repeated except for 1942 and 1943 during World War II.

Revelers began celebrating New Year's Eve in Times Square as early as 1904, but it was in 1907 that the New Year's Eve Ball made its maiden descent from the flagpole atop One Times Square.

It all began when Adolph Ochs, the owner of The New York Times, decided to celebrate the paper's new headquarters and establish Times Square as a festive center.  Ochs hired Jacob Starr, an immigrant metalworker, to build the first ball. Starr later founded Artkraft Strauss, the company that handled the ball's construction and lowering for almost 100 years.

The first ball in 1907 was made of iron and wood, lit by 100 bulbs, and lowered by hand.

By the 1920s, the tradition was well established and New Yorkers celebrated New Year's Eve by flocking to Times Square to watch a newly designed 400-pound wrought iron ball drop. Despite the onset of Prohibition, revelers crowded the streets, wearing party hats, blowing horns, and attending alcohol-heavy parties in speakeasies, defiant saloons, high-end nightclubs, and hotels. Many pockets bulged suspiciously, and champagne was just as likely sipped from coffee cups as from cocktail glasses.

Fun Fact: By the mid-1920s, several hotels, having learned from experience, established fully equipped medical stations for New Year's Eve, with physicians and nurses in attendance. One hotel is said to have offered $20 as a bonus for a single night’s work. That's equivalent to $370 today.