By Mike Bruton Who would have thought that the design of a
soccer ball would mimic that of an ancient carbon molecule in
deep space! Origin of the soccer ball In the mid 1800s, Charles
Goodyear, of motor car tyre fame, made the first vulcanised
rubber soccer balls. In 1872, the rules of soccer stated, not
surprisingly, that the ball must be round, with a circumference
of about 70 cm. In the early 20th century, soccer balls were
made from 18 oblong leather panels stitched together, but they
were not perfectly round. In the 1950s, something remarkable
happened – a company called Select in Denmark made a perfectly
round ball out of 12 pentagons (five-sided shapes) and 20
hexagons (six-sided shapes). This 32-panel sphere is called a
‘spherical polyhedron’ in mathspeak, and it is round because the
shapes bulge equally due to the pressure of the air inside. With
white hexagons and black pentagons, they became the most popular
soccer balls on the planet during the roaring 60s and beyond.
The official ball of the 197