I was recently teaching a class that included a section on valves.  When I got to Ball Valves I said that "while quarter-turn plug valves have been available for most of the 20th century, the earliest ball valves were commercially available around 1967."

This little factoid (which was irrelevant to the point of my lecture) totally derailed the presentation.  The factoid was based on a 1967 announcement from WKM about their "revolutionary" ball valve.  One of my students said that Hydril had been making ball valves for at least 10 years by 1967.  I can't find any tracks to that earlier ball valve.  

Does anyone have any insite into the origin of the first ball valves?

The first spherical ball-type valve was patented in 1871 by John Warren and assigned jointly to John Chapman, the founder of Chapman Valve Co. This was an all brass valve- brass ball and brass seats. Apparently it was not a commercial success, because none of my 19th century or early 20th century Chapman valve catalogs make any mention of that type of valve. We think of the metal-seated ball valve as being a recent development, but the concept has been around for 125 years!

The first resilient seated ball valve patent I have found in my research, was issued to the engineers of Crane Co., in April, 1945. In talking to long-time personnel of the company, the legend is that the marketing folks "could see no viable use for the valve" and so it was not produced by Crane! It is my understanding that within the next several years, either McCanna or Jamesbury first utilized Teflon to make the soft-seated ball valves that we know today.

The quarter-turn ball valve was developed in 1949 in response to a US Navy requirement for a quick-acting and compact valve.  The developers were the people who went on to form Jamesbury and Worcester controls. Products appear on the commercial market in the early 50s as referenced in an earlier post. All historic reference I can find to ball valves previous to that refer to what we now call a ball-check.

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