Toy balloon in "Swiss Family Robinson" (1813) and in "Moby Dick" (1851). The first rubber balloons were made by Professor Michael Faraday in 1824 for use in his experiments with hydrogen at the Royal Institution in London. "The caoutchouc is exceedingly elastic", he wrote in the Quarterly Journal of Science the same year. "Bags made of it...have been expanded by having air forced into them, until the caoutchouc was quite transparent, and when expanded by hydrogen they were so light as to form balloons with considerable ascending power..." Faraday made his balloons by cutting round two sheets of rubber laid together and
Balloon Experiments with Amateur Radio of which is contained within an insulated foam box suspended below the balloon. A parachute recovery system is automatically deployed when the balloon bursts at altitude. On May 27, 2000, this helium-filled balloon with a payload of .977 kg, was launched from the Bremner airport, and reached an altitude of 31,762 meters (104,206 feet). This first flight was a test of the GPS receiver used, to ensure that the unit successfully reported location information above the 60,000-foot limit imposed upon manufacturers, as well as the payload enclosure and antenna system to be used for future flights. A Pooh Bear mascot