Helium Time Columns is a work of public art outside of the Discovery Center, a small science museum in the helium capital of the world, Amarillo, Texas. The sculpture was erected in 1968, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the discovery of helium, first noticed by astronomers in 1868 from spectrographs of the sun. Amarillo was the center of global helium production from the 1920s to the 1990s. The monument is located in Jack B. Kelley Plaza, named after the Amarillo resident who in 1946 obtained the first civilian contract from the government to purchase and market helium. Jack B. Kelley developed high-pressure tube trailers that made the national distribution of helium from Amarillo possible. He is one of the founders of the modern helium industry, which includes the toy balloon market, and the company that bears his name became the largest compressed gas trucking company in the nation.