Definition of Balloon:
A balloon is an expandable flexible bag that can be inflated with a type of gas such as helium, hydrogen, nitrous oxide or just plain air.
What are they made of?
Original from the Amazon Rainforest, the Para rubber tree (Hevea brasiliensis), produces a sap that is harvested in liquid form . In contact with the air, the sap solidifies into a stretchy substance known as Latex or Cautchouc.
More than 3,000 years ago, the Olmec Indians from the Amazon, learned how to obtain the sap of the Para rubber tree by making a small incision in the trunk -just deep enough to tap into the rubber vessels without harming the tree´s growth- and collecting it in small buckets. They used the rubber to make the balls used in the Mesoamerican ballgame. The Portuguese tried to grow the Para tree in Europe and Africa with little success, but nowadays the Para tree has been successfully grown all over the world and is very common in big plantations in Southeast Asia.
Who made the first balloon?
Before the rubber era, balloons were made from animal bladders or intestines. They say that Galileo himself inflated a pig´s bladder in an experiment to measure the weight of the air. Indian and Eskimo children -from time immemorial- used to play with the inflated bladders of sea animals.
The first rubber balloon was made in 1824. Professor Michael Faraday, in his work at the Royal Institution in London, was experimenting with gases and raw rubber, called caoutchouc. These are his own words: “The caoutchouc is exceedingly elastic. Bags made of it … have been expanded by having air forced into them, until the caoutchouc was quite transparent.” He probably was also the first one to fill wholesale balloons with hydrogen. His journal article continues: “When expanded by hydrogen, the rubber bags were so light as to form balloons with considerable ascending power.”
When were balloons first commercialized?
In 1825, Thomas Hancock – a rubber manufacturer from England- marketed a kit made up of a bottle of rubber solution (latex) and a condensing syringe. People bought the kit and did the balloons themselves and used them as wholesale party balloons or put them in party bags.
In 1889, Montgomery Ward in the United States had red rubber wholesale balloons in their catalog. The price was $.40 a dozen. They were imported from Belgium until 1907, when the Anderson Rubber Company in Akron, Ohio,became balloon wholesalers and started manufacturing their own latex balloons that became popular as wholesale party balloons.
