History

• Toy balloons were first introduced by pioneer rubber manufacturer Thomas Hancock.
• Vulcanized toy balloons were first manufactured by J.G. Ingram of London in 1847.
• The first that people got a chance to get a rubber balloon was in year 1825.
• As early as 1889, balloons could be bought by people in the United States.
• The Anderson Rubber Company in Ohio, United States was the first producer of balloons on a commercial basis.

Rubber balloons were first 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 pressing the edges together. The tacky rubber welded automatically, and the inside of the balloon was rubbed with flour in order to prevent the joining together of two surfaces. For the first time in the history of balloons, the wonder product became accessible to people in the year 1825. Interestingly, they had to make the actual balloon by themselves. The balloons came in the form of a kit which included a bottle of rubber solution and a condensing syringe. The kit was marketed by England's pioneer rubber manufacturer, Thomas Hancock.

As early as 1889, balloons could be bought by people in the United States. The famed Montgomery Ward had them in their catalogue that year. The price was 4 cents each or 40 cents a dozen. In fact, the balloons were not made in the United States, but were probably imported from Belgium.

In 1931, balloon technology frog leaped much and according to an industry catalogue, "Neil Tillotson dipped the first modern latex balloon made from the sap of a rubber tree." The catalogue further states that the balloon, shaped like a cat's head with pointed ears and a whisker-printed face, was the world's first novelty-shaped and printed balloon. Before that, the manufacture of balloons involved a cumbersome, lengthy process. Tillotson founded the Tillotson Rubber Company which makes balloons even today.