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A disco ball, mirror ball, glitter ball, or ball mirror is a roughly spherical
Sphere

A sphere is a symmetrical geometrical object. In non-mathematical usage, the term is used to refer either to a round ball or to its two-dimensional surface....
 object that reflects light directed at it in many directions, producing a complex display. Its surface consists of hundreds or thousands of facet
Facet

Facets are flat faces on geometric shapes. The organization of naturally occurring facets was key to early developments in crystallography, since they reflect the underlying symmetry of the crystal structure....
s, nearly all of approximately the same shape and size, and each having a mirror
Mirror

A mirror is an object with one surface polished, which leads to reflection and another opaque. The most familiar type of mirror is the plane mirror, which has a flat surface....
ed surface.






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Disco Ball
A disco ball, mirror ball, glitter ball, or ball mirror is a roughly spherical
Sphere

A sphere is a symmetrical geometrical object. In non-mathematical usage, the term is used to refer either to a round ball or to its two-dimensional surface....
 object that reflects light directed at it in many directions, producing a complex display. Its surface consists of hundreds or thousands of facet
Facet

Facets are flat faces on geometric shapes. The organization of naturally occurring facets was key to early developments in crystallography, since they reflect the underlying symmetry of the crystal structure....
s, nearly all of approximately the same shape and size, and each having a mirror
Mirror

A mirror is an object with one surface polished, which leads to reflection and another opaque. The most familiar type of mirror is the plane mirror, which has a flat surface....
ed surface. Usually it is mounted well above the heads of the people present, suspended from a device that causes it to rotate
Rotation

A rotation is a movement of an object in a circular motion. A two-dimensional object rotates around a center of rotation. A Three-dimensional space object rotates around a line called an axis....
 steadily on a vertical axis, and illuminated by spotlights, so that stationary viewers experience beams of light flashing over them, and see myriad spots of light spinning around the walls of the room.

What are now called "disco balls" were first used in nightclubs in the 1920s. They were already in existence and use before then. An early example can be seen in the nightclub sequence of Berlin: Die Sinfonie der Großstadt, a German silent film
Silent film

A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially spoken dialogue. The idea of combining motion pictures with recorded sound is nearly as old as film itself, but because of the technical challenges involved, synchronized dialogue was only made possible in the late 1920s with the introduction of the Vitaphone system....
 from 1927. In the 1970s, these devices were a standard accompaniment to disco
Disco

Disco is a genre of dance music that originated in and was initially popular among African American, gay and Hispanic and Latino Americans communities in the United States in the late 1960s....
 music, and by the end of the 20th century, the name "disco ball" had largely eclipsed the earlier names that had been applied to the object.