• Scientist Michael Faraday was the first to “invent” a balloon. He needed to isolate gases to run tests, so he laid two sheets of rubber together, dusted with flour to prevent them from sticking together except at the edges, where they sealed themselves shut. The rubber he was using was latex sap from a rubber plant. This way, he isolated hydrogen for experiments in 1824. The idea spread quickly throughout the scientific community.
- A year later, rubber manufacturer Thomas Hancock noted that these newfangled balloons could be fun for people to play with. He began selling balloon-making kits containing a tube of rubber and a syringe to fill it with air.
- Balloons got a boost in 1839 when Charles Goodyear discovered that heating rubber with sulfur in a process called vulcanization made the rubber durable and elastic. This made great tires and better balloons.
- The first recognizable party balloons were manufactured by J.G. Ingram of London in 1847. These were the first balloons designed specifically for decoration.
- The U.S. Government started experimenting with helium-filled research balloons in 1903, which led to helium being used in party balloons, which became widespread by the mid-1920s. Hydrogen had previously been used. Although hydrogen has 10% more lifting power than helium, it also explodes.
- Neil Tillotson was working as a researcher at a rubber plant when he lost his job at the outset of the Great Depression. He began tinkering at home with ways to mass-produce latex balloons by dipping a revolving line of bulbous forms into a vat of liquid latex, letting it dry, and peeling it off.
- Neil Tillotson opened the Tillotson Rubber Company in 1931 and made a fortune selling balloons. The world’s first brightly colored balloons were sold at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1933. Tillotson later adapted the technique to turn out latex exam gloves that can be worn on either hand.
- Marketing maven Helen Warny was largely responsible for the rise in the popularity of balloons. She founded The Toy Balloon Company in New York City. She staged huge balloon showers, created balloon-decked parade floats, and fashioned unique balloon-based window displays. The peak of her efforts came when she released 50,000 helium-filled balloons at once. Each was printed with an advertiser’s name and bore a tag which offered a prize to the finder.
- Long, skinny, flexible balloons came on the market in the 1950s, leading to the art of twisty balloon animals. Wham-O led the charge in water balloon sales in the 1960s.
- By the 1970s, NASA technology entered the world of party balloons when Mylar came on the scene. Mylar is almost completely impermeable, meaning helium remains inside the balloon for weeks or months. One drawback of Mylar is that it can cause power outages when it comes into contact with power lines. Mylar balloons can travel long distances before eventually landing in places where they can interfere with wildlife.
- Mylar is not biodegradable at all. Latex balloons biodegrade after several weeks of exposure to UV light on dry land, but require a year or more to biodegrade if they land in water, making them especially dangerous for aquatic life that may either ingest the balloon or become entangled in the string. Today, it’s estimated that over 400 million balloons are sold annually in the USA.
