the fireworks displays, which were detonated directly over the crowd and, thus, posed a danger. The "ball drop" was directly inspired by a time ball atop the Western Union Telegraph Building in lower Manhattan. By then, Times Square had become a popular venue for New Year's celebrations. The ball drop is still held atop One Times Square, attracting an average of one million spectators yearly. The Times Tower was also used for telegraph experiments, and its searchlights continued to display election results, including those for the 1908 United States presidential election. The building's roof attracted visitors such as French author Pierre Loti, who called the Times Tower "one of the boldest" of New York City's skyscrapers, and Jamalul Kiram II, the Sultan of Sulu. Times relocation and office use There was so little space on the Times Tower site that its mechanical basements had to descend as much as . By the early 1910s, the Times Square area had become densely developed with restaurants, theaters, hotels, and office buildings. Despite the dearth of space, a Times booklet said: "It did not occur to anyone to suggest that the [Times] should desert Times Square." On February 2, 1913, eight years after it moved to One Times Square, the Times moved its corporate headquarters to 229 West 43rd Street, where it remained until 2007. Most of the Times operations quickly moved to the annex, except for the publishing and subscription divisions. The Times retained ownership of the Times Tower and leased out the former space there. The building continued to be popularly known as the Times Tower for half a century. The original Times Square Ball above the Times Tower was replaced following the 1919–1920 New Year's celebrations. A neon beacon was installed atop the Times Tower's roof in September 1928. An electromechanical news ticker, colloquially known as the "zipper", started operating near the base of the building on November 6, 1928, after eight weeks of installation. The zipper originally consisted of 14,800 light bulbs, with the display controlled by a chain conveyor system inside the building; individual letter elements (a form of movable type) were loaded into frames to spell out news headlines. As the frames moved along the conveyor, the letters themselves triggered electrical contacts which lit the external bulbs (the zipper was later upgraded to use modern LED technology). The first headline displayed on the zipper announced Herbert Hoover's