In the early years of tennis, balls were often made of leather stuffed with hair or wool. Shakespeare refers to this in Much Ado About Nothing (Act III, Scene II):
CLAUDIO
No, but the barber's man hath been seen with him,
and the old ornament of his cheek hath already stuffed tennis rackets balls.
In 1480, Louis XI of France forbade the filling of tennis balls with chalk, sand, sawdust, or earth, and stated that they were to be made of good leather well-stuffed with wool. Other early cheap tennis racket balls were made by Scottish craftsmen from a wool-wrapped stomach of a sheep or goat and tied with rope. Those recovered from the hammer-beam roof of Westminster Hall during a period of recent restoration were found to have been manufactured from a combination of putty and human hair, and were dated to the reign of Henry VIII. Other versions, using materials such as animal fur, rope made from animal intestines and muscles, and pine wood, were found in Scottish castles dating back to the 16th century. In the 18th century, ¾" strips of wool were wound tightly around a nucleus made by rolling a number of strips into a little discount tennis racket ball. String was then tied in many directions around the ball and a white cloth covering sewn around the ball. This explains why modern rubber tennis balls still have a cloth covering (in the early days of lawn tennis, it proved quite difficult to get the cloth to adhere very well to the rubber). This type of cloth prince tennis racquet ball, with a cork core, is still used for the original game of tennis, today called real tennis. With the introduction of lawn tennis in the 1870s, vulcanized rubber was first used to manufacture balls, often in tubes of four with a package, but not with the name of the brand.
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