How balloon framing got its name:
In the early 19th century, two technological developments made it possible to frame houses with thin dimensional lumber, rather than the enormous timbers that had been used previously in Europe since ancient times.
Sawmills, powered by either water or steam, facilitated the economical cutting of small dimensional lumber, beginning in the late 18th century.
Factories began mass-producing nails, which, when handmade, were too expensive to use in framing (they were used for flooring and siding, generally). If nails are not available for framing, joints have to be pegged mortise-and-tenon, which is highly labor-intensive. This tends to encourage framing with large timbers, posts being set at wide intervals.
When old-school carpenters watched new 2x4 framed buildings going up in 1830s Chicago, they haughtily pronounced them too flimsy to last, saying they would blow away like a balloon in the first strong wind. They were wrong, of course, but the name stuck.
I worked on a 1915 balloon frame house last week, upgraded the service and added some appliance circuits. They are a breeze to fish wires in, since there is no top or bottom plate. The studs are nailed to a beam below the floor, and the floor joists are nailed to the studs some distance above. A piece of string and a weight are literally all you need for a 1-story house, which this one was. I recently acquired a 1915 Terrell Croft book on wiring finished buildings (that meant previously unwired, back then). Several ingenious techniques are illustrated for fishing between floors and walls, techniques which are largely forgotten today since they do not work with platform framing.
