History of the Bouncy Castle

• There is an ongoing “disagreement” between the U.S. and England about who invented the first bouncy castle – our research shows that in 1959 John Scurlock of Shreveport, Louisiana experimented with inflatable covers for tennis courts. He noticed his employees jumping on the covers.  University students in England about 1961 designed a bouncy castle for a fundraising event.
• The first inflatable rental company was started by Frances Scurlock in 1968  and in 1976, Frances & John opened the first custom facility for the production & rental of the inflatables
• The first inflatable was called a “Space Pillow” as it was an open top mattress with no sides, in 1967 a pressurized inflatable top was added.
• In 1974 columns were added to release the heat created by the fans which inflated the space pillow & top.
• There are now inflatable slides, obstacle courses, interactive inflatable games which all stemmed from the original invention.
• Bouncy castles have a variety of names including moon bounce, astrojump, moonwalk, jolly jump and spacewalk.  They’ve also been referred to as CIT (Closed Inflatable Trampolines)
• Today bouncy castles are found at birthday parties, festivals, church fairs, malls, school fairs, picnics, fundraisers and Christmas parties!