I asked this question in GQ a long while back and got a variety of answers, with perhaps “mirror ball” or even “mirrored ball” being the best that batch of posters could come up with. I have this thing in my head (yeah, I know, don’t laugh) that there was an earlier name for it that ran along the lines of “rotogravure” (which was a section of the newspaper dealing with pictures as celebrated in Irving Berlin’s Easter Parade, IIRC). Of course, that wasn’t the term I heard, but it had that same sort of feel.
I even called a party supply place and asked them if they carried “those shiny balls they hang over the dance floor and shine lights on and they light up the room with little shiny squares of light” and the guy said, “you mean disco balls?” and I said, “Yeah, but is there another name for them, since I have seen them in movies set in the Roaring 20’s or even earlier?”
Does anybody remember the days before disco, the balls in dance halls, and a name for such?
I do suspect “ball room” refers to some other concept than a ball hanging from the ceiling, and I believe I have heard the term in historical fiction and movies going back to powdered wig or even earlier days.
Help solve the mystery, or at least come up with a better name for those things.
Back when I was a kid there was a TV show called “The Roaring 20s”, the opening for which (also used in commercials and at commercial bgreak-aways) was a close-up of a mirrored ball. Ever since, I’ve thought of them as “Roaring 20s balls”.
Neat term. I can’t say I remember the show (or the commercials) but I do make it a point to watch out for the appearance of those balls in older movies. I suspect the light source for such things, along with the motors that drive them to rotate, would imply dates since electricity was harnessed, so I can’t visualize them being used in royal parties in Henry the Eighth or Queen Elizabeth I’s days. But I do wonder when they came into regular use.
Picture a mule or donkey hooked up to something like one of those millstones that would drive a shaft to turn the ball, along with a big magnifying glass focusing the light from a candle on the ball as it turned. And a bunch of people in period costume doing the dirty bop to some sackbut music. Wonder when Scorsese will do a movie about that era with a clever title like “Under the <whatever the ball will be called>.” I bet he’ll get Leonardo to take the Daniel Day-Lewis role this time. But who will get Winona’s part?
I’d go with “YOUR” until at least 2040, by which time people will probably forget this thread exists/existed or else it will be hard to find with the Wayback Machine.
Anybody posting here who can remember (from first-hand experience – counting birth) the 1920’s? I do believe we have at least one who can vouch for the 1930’s and I can help with the 1940’s but I don’t remember any disco balls that far back. On the other hand, I do seem to recall movies set in the war years where some swing band was operating with the yet-to-be-identified ball doing its thing above the dance floor.
Yes, IIRC they’re a key element in both refracting and reassembling the energy of a 1920’s style death ray. Of course, 1920’s Style Death Ray would be able to tell you more once s/he gets here.