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 (game) Balloon (game) Balloon, balloon-ball or wind-ball was a game similar to the modern game of volleyball in which a leather ball would be batted by the fist or forearm to prevent it from touching the ground. The game was played in ancient Rome where it was known as follis— the Latin word for a leather bag. Such a ball made of leather was quite heavy and so protection might be used such as a leather gauntlet or wooden bracer. Once rubber became available, modern players in Great Britain played the game with lighter balls of inflated rubber, so that younger