Golf Ball

On April 11, 1899, Coburn Haskell, a golfer from Cleveland, Ohio, and Bertram G. Work, an employee of the B.F. Goodrich Company in Akron, Ohio, received a patent for a golf ball. Initially, golf balls had consisted of leather pouches stuffed with boiled feathers. In 1848, a new golf ball—the gutta-percha—began to replace the "feathery," as the original golf ball was known. The gutta-percha consisted of hardened juice from trees located in South America and the Pacific Islands. Unfortunately, the gutta-percha proved difficult for golfers to hit out of both fairways and the rough. They were, however, much cheaper to manufacture than the feathery.

Haskell's and Work's ball consisted of rubber thread wrapped around a solid rubber core. This golf ball was much easier for golfers to hit and also allowed players greater control when they hit the ball. As a result of the Haskell and Work golf ball, the game of golf dramatically increased in popularity within the United States.