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
William Irvine (chemist) William Irvine (chemist) William Irvine FRSE (1743-1787) was an 18th-century British doctor and chemist who served as assistant to Joseph Black in many of his important experiments. He twice served as President of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow: 1775 to 1777 and 1783 to 1785. He was born in Glasgow in 1743 the son of Michael Irvine, a merchant. He studied at the High School in Glasgow. He entered Glasgow University in 1756 and studied Medicine and Chemistry under Joseph Black. Black later chose Irvine to assist him in his experiments on latent heat. Irvine graduated