From Wood-Jacketed Tins To Aerospace

Five brothers founded Ball in 1880 with a $200 loan from their Uncle George. In the beginning, they made wood-jacketed tin cans for products like paint and kerosene, but soon expanded their offerings to glass- and tin-jacketed containers. In 1884, the brothers began making glass home-canning jars, the product that established Ball as a household name. The brothers—Edmund, Frank, George, Lucius and William—moved the company from Buffalo, New York, to Muncie, Indiana, in 1887 to take advantage of abundant natural gas reserves essential to making glass.

Ball grew rapidly in the ensuing decade and has been in more than 45 businesses since its founding. Ball no longer manufactures the ubiquitous canning jars, but we’ve expanded and grown into a worldwide metal packaging company that makes billions of recyclable metal containers, and a unique aerospace business that designs one-of-a-kind solutions to answer scientific and technical challenges. We manufacture on four continents and we’re based in Broomfield, Colorado. For a more detailed journey through Ball’s successes, visit our timeline.