Condoms are older than rubber. They're older than latex, older than the United States, and older than the word "condom" itself. People have been wrapping things in linen, gut, silk and tortoiseshell for the same simple reason for over three thousand years, with results ranging from the practical to the frankly alarming.
So when you ask who invented the condom, the honest answer is nobody and everybody. There is no single inventor and no single invention date - condoms evolved over more than 3,000 years, from linen and animal gut to the latex sheath we know today. What follows is the history of condoms told as a timeline, with all the strange detours intact, from a Cretan goat's bladder to an FDA-approved nitrile sheath.
Condoms have existed in some form for over 3,000 years. Ancient Egyptians used linen sheaths around 1000 BC, while Japan and China used glans covers of horn, tortoiseshell or oiled silk before the 15th century. The Italian anatomist Gabriele Falloppio wrote the first European description in 1564. Charles Goodyear's vulcanised rubber made mass production possible from the 1850s, and latex arrived in the 1920s. The word "condom" first appeared in print in 1706, though its origin remains unknown.
In this guide
- When Were Condoms Invented? The Ancient World
- The 1600s: From Linen Sheath to Animal Gut
- An 18th-Century View of the Condom: Casanova and the London Trade
- Where Does the Word Condom Come From?
- Charles Goodyear's Rubbers Take Over
- The Modern Condom: Latex, the Pill and the AIDS Era
- The Female Condom: An Older Idea Than You Think
- Frequently Asked Questions About the History of Condoms
When Were Condoms Invented? The Ancient World
The earliest history is genuinely murky, and nobody can name the first condom because several cultures arrived at the idea independently. The trail goes cold long before any reliable records begin.
Legend has it that King Minos of Crete, around 3000 BCE, used a goat's bladder as a protective sheath. It's a good story, but it's a story, with no solid evidence behind it, so treat it as folklore rather than fact.
Egypt gives us firmer ground. Linen coverings dating to around 1000 BC have been linked to Egyptian tombs, including finds from the Tutankhamun era (1342 to 1324 BC), with the linen often soaked in oil. Historians still argue about what they were for: some say contraception, some disease, and some think they were simply protection against insects and tropical infection.
Japan had the kabuto-gata, a cover for the glans alone, made from tortoiseshell or animal horn and used before the 15th century. A softer calfskin version, the kawa-gata, also existed, and these were reportedly used to help with erectile difficulty as much as for protection. A tortoiseshell cap is not many people's idea of a romantic evening, but needs must.
China had its own version: glans condoms made from oiled silk paper or lamb intestine, again before the 15th century. These were mostly the preserve of the upper classes and used chiefly for birth control.
There's a pattern worth pointing out. Glans condoms, the kind that cover only the head, predate full-length sheaths in both Asia and Europe. A cover over the head alone offers little real protection against disease, so these were almost certainly about contraception rather than stopping infection.
| Culture | Approx date | Material | Likely purpose |
|---|---|---|---|
| Crete (legend) | ~3000 BCE | Goat's bladder | Protective sheath (unverified) |
| Egypt | ~1000 BC | Oiled linen | Contraception, disease or insect protection |
| Japan | Pre-15th century | Tortoiseshell, horn, calfskin | Contraception, erectile aid |
| China | Pre-15th century | Oiled silk paper, lamb intestine | Birth control |
All of this was improvised and undocumented in any medical sense. That changed when a 16th-century Italian anatomist finally wrote the thing down, and put it to the test.
The 1600s: From Linen Sheath to Animal Gut
The oldest condom you can actually go and look at still exists, and it came with an instruction manual telling you to dip it in warm milk first.
Before we get to that, the documentation. The Italian anatomist Gabriele Falloppio (1523 to 1562) gave the first written European description of a condom in De Morbo Gallico, published after his death in 1564. His design was a linen sheath soaked in wine, guaiac wood extract and mercury, cut to cover the glans and held on with a pink ribbon. The target was syphilis, then known as "the French disease". Falloppio is the same anatomist who named the fallopian tube.
He also made a remarkable claim: that he had tested the sheath on 1,100 men and not one caught the disease, writing "I call immortal God to witness that not one of them was infected." It's widely cited as the earliest documented efficacy trial of any barrier contraceptive, though modern historians treat the numbers with heavy scepticism. Reliable or not, it's the first time anyone bothered to record results.
Now the milk. The oldest surviving condom dates to 1640 and was found in Lund, Sweden. It's made from pig intestine and came with a Latin user manual instructing the owner to dip it in warm (unboiled) milk before use to ward off disease. You can see it today at the Tyrolean County Museum in Austria.
Britain has its own grubby contribution. In a cesspit near Dudley Castle, close to Birmingham, archaeologists found fragments of around ten condoms made from fish and mammal intestine, dating to roughly 1642. They're among the oldest physical condom finds anywhere in the country, which is a sentence nobody expected to write about a Midlands cesspit.
Later in the 1600s, a physician to Charles II is credited with refining a design from stretched and oiled pork intestine. Animal-gut sheaths, often from sheep or goat, were in common use throughout the century. Not everyone approved. The Jesuit theologian Leonardus Lessius campaigned against condoms as sinful, kicking off a moral counter-current that would run for centuries.
By the 1700s the condom was a business, and a scandalous one at that.
An 18th-Century View of the Condom: Casanova and the London Trade
The 18th-century London condom trade was run largely by two rival women, and one of Europe's most famous lovers tested his by blowing them up like balloons.
That lover was Casanova. He inflated condoms before use to check for holes, an early and surprisingly sensible quality-control method. He was a reluctant convert, mind you, having initially dismissed them as "dead animal skin" before coming round to their usefulness.
The supply side belonged to Mrs Phillips. She ran a wholesale condom business at the Sign of the Green Canister on Half Moon Street in London from at least 1731, and by 1766 she was advertising over 35 years in the trade. Her condoms were exported to France, Spain, Portugal and Italy. As far as the records go, hers is the earliest documented female-run commercial contraceptive business.
Her chief rival was Mrs Perkins, who reportedly took over the market when Phillips retired. Both women used rhyming street hawkers to advertise their wares, which is a marketing channel that has, sadly, fallen out of fashion.
The product itself was made from sheep intestine, secured with silk ribbons and sold at pubs, theatres and barbershops. These were not single-use. They were soaked in water before use, then washed and reused afterwards, partly because they were expensive enough that throwing one away after a single outing would have seemed mad.
How a Georgian condom was used: obtain from a pub, theatre or barber; soak in water to soften; fit over the glans; secure with a silk ribbon; wash thoroughly afterwards; reuse next time.
The moral opposition kept pace. In the early 1700s the Duke of Argyle lobbied to have condoms made illegal, arguing that they didn't actually prevent syphilis. For all this trade, nobody could agree on what to call the thing.
Where Does the Word Condom Come From?
Nobody actually knows where the word "condom" comes from, and the most popular origin story is almost certainly invented.
The word turns up in print in the early 18th century in a tangle of spellings: "condum" in 1706 and 1717, "condon" in 1708, and "cundum" in 1744. The spelling settled down long after the object was in common use.
As for the root, etymologists class it as genuinely uncertain. The leading candidates are the Latin "condus", meaning a receptacle or vessel, and the Persian "kemdu", a length of intestine used for storage. Some point to the Italian "guantone", from "guanto" meaning glove. None of these has ever been confirmed.
Then there's the Colonel Condom myth. Popular legend claims a "Colonel Condom" served as physician to Charles II and gave his name to the device. The story is traceable only to 1709 and is rejected by most authorities. It's a myth, plain and simple.
The cross-Channel blame game is more entertaining. The French called condoms "capote anglaise" (English cape) or "redingote anglaise" (English riding coat), while the English called them "French letters", with the OED's earliest quotation dating to around 1856. One story holds that young men on the Grand Tour would post condoms home enclosed in letters, hence "French letters". Each nation was determined to pin anything sexual on the other.
One more word earns its place here. "Scumbag" started life as slang for a used condom, with its earliest recorded condom sense in the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry in 1939. The OED dates the "despicable person" insult to 1972, when the meaning drifted from the object to the person. Words aside, the thing itself was about to change beyond recognition, thanks to a bankrupt American and a vat of rubber.
Charles Goodyear's Rubbers Take Over
The man whose name is on millions of condoms never made one, never profited from them, and died in a French debtors' prison.
Charles Goodyear discovered vulcanisation in 1839 and patented it in 1844, the process that turns sticky natural rubber into a stable, durable material. The first rubber condom followed in 1855, with mass production arriving by the late 1850s. Nathaniel Hayward had worked alongside Goodyear on early sulphur experiments, and in Britain Thomas Hancock filed a separate vulcanisation patent in 1843. By the late 19th century "rubber" had become a polite euphemism for the thing itself.
There's a myth worth puncturing here. Early rubber condoms were thick and reusable, and animal-skin condoms actually offered better sensation. Plenty of people stuck with skin well into the rubber era, so the arrival of rubber didn't sweep the old materials away overnight.
Branding came next. In 1916 Young's Rubber Company launched the Trojan brand in the United States. A few years earlier, in 1912, Julius Fromm had developed a cement-dipping method in Germany that produced the first branded condoms, sold as "Fromm's Act".
The law, meanwhile, was pulling hard in the other direction. The 1873 Comstock Act made it a federal crime to send contraceptives through the US mail, and 24 states passed their own versions. Access stayed legally restricted until Margaret Sanger's 1916 clinic began to challenge it.
The First World War exposed the cost of that prudishness. Germany was the only major combatant to officially issue condoms, complete with use inspections. The US and UK withheld them on moral grounds. The US Army was losing around 18,000 effective soldiers a day to venereal disease, and STIs put roughly 5% of British troops out of action before limited UK distribution finally began in 1917. Armies refused condoms to prevent immorality, then lost more men to infection than they might have to enemy fire.
The wartime disaster forced a rethink. By the next war, and with the arrival of latex, the modern condom was about to be born.
The Modern Condom: Latex, the Pill and the AIDS Era
For a few years there were even radium-branded condoms, sold back when radioactivity was still marketed as good for you.
In the 1920s, latex replaced moulded rubber. It was thinner, stronger and cheaper, and it formed a genuine barrier against viral STIs in a way the old rubber never managed. Ernest Hopkins at the US Rubber Company developed the water-suspension process that made thin, reliable condoms practical to manufacture.
The Second World War saw the US military reverse its First World War stance completely. It issued condoms with the slogan "Don't forget, put it on before you put it in", and the US venereal disease rate fell from around 18,000 cases a day to about 600. And yes, the radium condoms were real: the Nutex Company of Philadelphia sold them through the 1930s and 40s.
In Britain, around 60% of married couples relied on condoms before the pill arrived. Durex pushed the product forward with the first lubricated condom in 1957 and the first anatomically shaped sheath. If you want to see how far lubrication has come since, our lubricants collection is a good place to start.
Then came the dip. The contraceptive pill arrived in the 1960s and pushed condoms out of the picture for contraception almost overnight. Even the resistance had odd sources: Marie Stopes rejected them despite championing birth control, and Sigmund Freud opposed all forms of contraception.
The AIDS era changed everything again. The UK's "Don't Die of Ignorance" campaign launched on 9 January 1987, with the rival Mates brand running parallel ads. Condom use among gay and bisexual men rose from around 10% before 1980 to 78% by 1987, one of the fastest documented behaviour changes in public health.
In February 2022, ONE/myONE became the first condom FDA-approved specifically for anal sex, after an Emory University trial found a 0.7% failure rate. Around 18 billion condoms are now made worldwide each year, with Malaysia's Karex Berhad the largest maker at over 5 billion, roughly one in five on earth.
Today's condoms come in more shapes, sizes and textures than any Georgian hawker could have dreamed of. You can browse the range in our condoms collection, and pair them with the lubricants collection. One device the modern story still leaves out, though, is the condom designed to be worn by the receptive partner.
The Female Condom: An Older Idea Than You Think
The female condom is usually filed as a 1990s product, but the idea is centuries older.
Historians credit the Ndyuka people of Suriname with designing a female condom from organic material, placed inside the vagina before intercourse and held in place by the vaginal walls. It stands as one of the earliest female-controlled barrier methods on record, which means the need it answers was understood centuries before the modern version existed.
A rubber version is associated with Marie Stopes in the 1920s, though it's best understood as an early-20th-century experiment rather than a firmly dated product. The properly modern version arrived later. The FC2 female condom received FDA approval in 1993, made by the Female Health Company of Chicago. Today's versions are made from nitrile plastic, inserted before sex, and protect against both pregnancy and STIs. They've since been pushed hard in public health campaigns abroad, notably in Zimbabwe, as a method women can control themselves.
Why does it matter? Because it gave women a non-hormonal method of protection that didn't depend on male compliance. That's a genuine shift in contraceptive agency, not just another product on the shelf.
It's not without trade-offs. The female condom is female-controlled, can be inserted well in advance, and suits people with latex allergies. Against that, it's more expensive than a standard condom and takes a bit of practice to insert comfortably.
From a Cretan legend to FDA approval, the brief has stayed the same for 3,000 years: a barrier between two people that lets them enjoy each other without unwanted consequences. The materials changed beyond recognition. The job never did.
Frequently Asked Questions About the History of Condoms
When were condoms invented?
There's no single invention date. Egyptian linen sheaths date to around 1000 BC, glans condoms were used in Japan and China before the 15th century, the first written European description came from Gabriele Falloppio in 1564, and the first rubber condom appeared in 1855.
Who invented the condom?
No one person. Falloppio gave the first written description in 1564, Mrs Phillips was among the earliest commercial makers from 1731, and Charles Goodyear's 1839 vulcanisation process made the rubber condom possible. The idea appeared independently across several ancient cultures, so credit is genuinely shared.
What is the oldest surviving condom?
A pig-intestine condom from 1640, found in Lund, Sweden. It came with a Latin manual telling the user to dip it in warm milk before use to help prevent disease, and is now displayed at the Tyrolean County Museum in Austria.
Where does the word condom come from?
Nobody knows for certain. The word first appears in print in 1706, and the leading theories trace it to the Latin "condus" (vessel) or the Persian "kemdu" (a length of intestine used for storage). The popular tale of a "Colonel Condom" serving Charles II is dismissed by most authorities as a myth.
When was the female condom invented?
The idea is ancient. The Ndyuka people of Suriname are credited with an early version made from organic material. The modern FC2 received FDA approval in 1993 and is now made from nitrile plastic, protecting against both pregnancy and STIs.
How many condoms are made each year?
Around 18 billion condoms are produced worldwide every year. Malaysia's Karex Berhad is the largest single manufacturer, turning out over 5 billion annually, which works out at roughly one in every five condoms made anywhere on the planet.
This article is a historical overview for general information only and is not medical advice. The historical methods described here are not safe or recommended for use today. Anyone seeking modern contraception or STI protection should use a CE-marked condom and consult a healthcare professional or the NHS.
