"If we could ride a great glimmering ball back to Times Square a century ago, we might see ourselves in the men and women who gathered there on New Year’s Eve of 1907... Notwithstanding how they dressed or wore their hair, their lives were superficially similar to ours. They took the subway to work and lived in homes lighted by electricity. They talked on telephones, went to the movies and listened to music on their new Victrolas. They worried about their weight and wondered whether Christmas was becoming commercialized... And on Dec. 31, 1907, for the first time, they did something that hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers will do on Monday night: They celebrated the passing of ’07 into ’08 by watching an illuminated sphere falling from the sky."
-- Jim Rasenberger, When an Auld Acquaintance Was Brand-New, The New York Times.