Goodyear's “The Pneumatic” golf ball is one of the very few golf balls ever made with a para rubber cover.  Because the cover is para rubber, the marks on the ball— “Pat Aug 19, 1902” on one pole and “Goodyear, Akron” on the other and the "The pneumatic" stamped twice on opposite sides of the ball—are hard to impossible to read.  The rubber did not hold the stamps as well as gutta percha.  In addition, the ball does not bounce well and sounds very muted when lightly tapped with a coin because the cover is made from rubber. All these things make this ball pretty special, but there is more.

Not only is this the first and one of the very few balls to be made with a para rubber cover during the early part of the rubber core era, it has a Pneumatic core as covered under a patent filed on Sept 11, 1900 by Addison T. Saunders who assigned half of it to Frank Seiberling, the man who founded Goodyear Tire &  Rubber in 1898.  

The making of this ball was a bit of a marvel in and of itself.  According to the attached 1905 advertisement, the wall of wound thread between the cover and the pure Para Rubber “jacket” that held the compressed air consisted of a single thread of Sea Island cotton over one thousand feel long that was wound with perfect accuracy and uniformity.  

In the center of the ball, inside the para rubber “jacket” is compressed air.  The accompanying ads show the core of compressed air and the other layers.

One final thing.  The molding equator on this ball runs through the circular identification marks that are found on the poles opposite the equator on every other golf ball from this era. This is really a step outside the box—makes a neat ball for a bunch of reasons!

A Pneumatic advertisement is included in the photos to show the construction of this ball.