Soccer is maybe the most popular sport in the world. The soccer ball history is in fact the history of soccer. When talking about soccer ball history there are several periods to distinguish. Thus there are the early ball history, the balls in the 1800s, balls in the 1900s, and the modern times.
Early soccer ball history starts before the birth of Christ. It is known that people have liked kicking either a ball or something similar to one, since the beginnings of times. Indians in South America are known to have used a light elasticized ball, which is amazing since rubber started being produced only a few thousand years later. The early soccer balls were made of very peculiar materials from human and animal skulls to pig or cow bladders and wrapped up cloth. Between 255 BC and 220 AD, the Chinese played ‘tsu chu’ using animal-skin balls dribbled through gaps in a net stretched between two poles. Ancient Romans and Greeks also had a game which involved carrying and kicking a ball, whereas in certain ancient Egyptian rites soccer similarities have been discovered.
Pre-medieval and medieval stories and legends that can be qualified as part of the soccer ball history, also mention the use of animal bladders or skulls to play games similar to modern soccer. There is a story about people in two villages playing with a ball. An entire village ran and kicked a ball with the purpose of getting it into the other village’s square. The other village would in turn try to kick the skull to the first village’s square. In medieval times they used the bladders from animals killed for winter sustenance. Once inflated they would try to keep the ‘ball’ in the air by using their hands or feet. In time people noticed that covering the bladder with leather would maintain the shape better and longer.
The soccer ball history of the 1800s was marked by the 1836 patenting of vulcanized rubber by Charles Goodyear. In 1855 the same Charles Goodyear managed to create the first vulcanized rubber soccer balls. In 1862 H.J. Lindon came up with with a prototype for the first inflatable soccer ball bladders. Although he is the father of the rugby ball too, he did not patent the idea at the time because of the preference for the round ball. By the 1900s the soccer ball history had already enjoyed the use of stronger rubber balls that could withstand heavier and heavier pressure.
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