Featured image: Louisville Tourism
The mirror-tile covered balls may be most associated with the glitzy nightclubs of the 1970s, but, despite the “death of disco,” remain omnipresent today. Now, the disco ball’s sparkle has turned into planters and jewelry, inspiring “mirrorball” tattoos, and dancing its light on the walls in nightclubs, hotels, and residences. But disco ball history actually began in Kentucky over a century ago.
Before there was the disco ball, there was the “myriad reflector,” patented by Louis Woeste of Newport, Kentucky, in 1917. The round ball had a ring at the top for hanging and a series of mirrors affixed around the curves, rotated and lit for a dramatic effect.
“If you’ve read the patent, it does everything it was designed to do: to decorate a ballroom,” says Mick Sullivan, curator of guest experience at Frazier History Museum in Louisville.
Still, it didn’t exactly take off right away. His company, Stephens and Woeste, sold the invention in the Cincinnati area until the 1920s, but the dance halls were quiet during the early years of World War I. The patent expired in 1934, a year after Woeste’s death and well before the rise of disco.
From there, Louisville’s Omega National Products picked up the ball, so to speak, producing the mirrored sheets used to make the disco balls, reviving the design with carefully pasted tiles. At one time, they produced over 100,000 per year, especially in the 1970s when they glittered in famous clubs all over the world (including, rumor has it, Studio 54) and in the film Saturday Night Fever. The disco balls took off, becoming an especially important part of the LGBTQ+ nightlife scene as a symbol of a place where people could be themselves.
Omega has been responsible for many of the disco balls created over the last 75 years, although at much smaller quantities these days. Today, employee Yolanda Baker is the last artisan still handmaking them, whereas most are mass-produced overseas for cheap.
Baker also created one to welcome visitors to the Frazier Museum, which debuted in 2020 alongside the launch of the museum’s “Cool Kentucky” exhibit.
“We wanted it to be one of the first things you see when walking in the door,” says Sullivan of the 28-inch piece. “It [was] made by Yolanda and was donated to the museum by Omega.”
The Myriad Hotel opened in 2023 in the former disco ball factory in Louisville’s Highlands District, paying homage to its past with the original machinery used to pick up the tile pieces still by the pool. You’ll also find an onsite restaurant and, of course, disco ball decor.
No matter what shape the disco ball takes or where its displayed, the Kentucky-made icon still brings joy.
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