A historian traces the tradition’s links to space travel, the Doomsday Clock and Alfred Hitchcock "Few people counted down to anything until the 1960s and 1970s—and yes, that included the new year. Celebrations and midnight kisses on December 31, of course. Countdowns, no. How, then, did countdowns go from almost nonexistent to ubiquitous in the latter half of the 20th century? And why are we so drawn to them now, especially to mark one year’s end and another’s beginning?" READ MORE A 1930s couple rings in the new year with party blowers and streamers. New Year's Eve celebrations only began incorporating countdowns decades later, with the first crowd countdown in Times Square taking place in 1979. Photo by FPG / Hulton Archive / Getty Images The 1979 iteration of "Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve" featured the first Times Square crowd countdown to midnight. Photo by ABC Photo Archives / Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty Images