Gilbert had a boot and shoemakers shop on 19 High Street[1] next to Rugby School and started making balls for the school out of hand stitched, four-panel, leather casings and pig bladders.
There was no specific size that all the balls were as it depended on how small or large the pig's bladder was.
[3] In those early days William's nephew James, who was famed for his extraordinary lung power,[4] inflated the balls.
This spurred Lindon in the mid-1860s to pioneer the "rubber bladder", the Brass Hand pump inflator and finally the advent of shape standardization.
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