A Brief History of the Rocket (February 7, 1945)

7/27/2019 A Brief History of the Rocket (February 7, 1945)

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BRIEF HISTORY OF THE ROCKET

INTRODUCTION3 ~ r ) ) I uh r s u

z/7/45The inventors sc ient is ts and engineers who de-velop ideas seldom have control over the nature of the ir de-

velopment. kl f red Nobel l ived to see the explosive he haddiscovered to aid man come close to destroy ing him. Thepioneers of the autom.obile were not thiking of Tiger Tanks ;the Wright brothers were not thinking of the B-29. The in ventionsJ of a peacetime world have s tar t l ing applicat ions in a world a t war. In th is manner the rocket was developed .

E RLY HISTORYThe rocket wias invented about 1000 years ago y

the Chinese. I t s tar ted as a plaything for the Khan and hisfamily being used much as the skyrocket i s on the fourth ofJuly. I t d idn t take the Chinese long to catch on though.Soon the rocket was being used against the Mongol i n v d e r sfrom the north. The rocket was attached to an arrow and shotfrom a bow;. The arrow. wi th rocket attached acted much as thef ire-arrow of the American Indian. I t w.as not a: par t icular lysuccessful weapon. Not nearly as successful as t was spec-tacular . This spectacularness led to i t s introduction in toEuropean c iv i l iza t ion . The exact method by which the ideareached Europe is not known, but by 1400 t had arrived. Themili tary implications were seen a t once. k German engineerKonrad von Eichstadt gives us the f i r s t writ ten descript ion


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of the rocket in his book ~ B e l l i f o r t i s , writ ten in 1405.About f i f teen years: l a te r an I ta l ian J o a n e s de Fontana pro-.posed many mil i tary applications of the rocket among whichwere rockets: disguised as: rUlming hares and birds in f l ight .Very l i t t l e was actual ly done with the rocket as a weapon a tth is time. I t returned to i t s former use as an amusement.

LATER DEVELOP ffiNTSThe rocket remained a toy for almost four-hundred

years . But fate brought t out .of retirement. The Bri t lshin their three cornered struggle with the French and thenatives for possesion of India .carne upon the rocket , u s ~ d , oncemore as a weapon of war . The rocket had come to India direc t ly from China. In n d i ~ ~ as in the r e s t of the worldt had been used as an amusement. About 1780 an Indian po..

ten ta te Hydar A ~ i , Prince of Mysor saw tl1e poss ib i l i t ies ofthe rocket as a weapon. He organized a rocket corp in hisarmy which grew to about 5000 man. They used rockets againstthe Bri t i sh but without great success. The rocket was effect ive to a small degree and because of th is and the great amount of noise and smoke .t gave off t at t rac ted the a ttention of the Bri t ish . Various experiments were carr iedout on the rocleet. The principal invest igator wasSir William Congreve. He developed the rocket more in thes/pan of his l i f e than had a l l the men previous to him.


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He changed the case from paper to metal;; he enlarged the chargeand increased the range;: he made the rocket, for the f i r s tt ime, an effec t ive weapon of w a r ~ After a couple of inconclusive t r i a l s , came the rockets f i r s t great success. In~ 8 a Bri t i sh f lee t discharged 25,000 rockets a t the c i tyof Copenhagen, Denmark, and burnt i t to the ground. The nat ions of Europe f rant ical ly rushed rocket research, and y1820, every country in Europe had a rocket corps. Rocketswere used with varying success a l lo v e r the world. Thetfrockets red glare , the bombs burst ing in air were Congreverockets . Because of thei r inaccuracy, and because of theconstant improvement of the cannon, the rocket corps wereshort l ived. By 1870 the rocket was once more a toy, a fourthof July firework.

MODERN ROCKETRYRocke t ry was once again dormant, but not for long .

The f i r s t s t i r r ings of awakening came when, in 1903, a Ru ss ian, Ziolkohvsky, suggested tha t rockets were the only meansof solut ion to the problem of in te r-p lane tary t ravel l ing.Nothing much was done on th is idea unt i l the 1920 s . About1920, three men; Dr. R.H. Goddard of America, Ronert EsnaultPelter ie of France, and Proffessor Hermann Oberth of Germany;unknown to each other, s ta r ted the revival of the rocket . Allwere in te res ted in t as a means of in te r-p lane tary t ravel


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In 1927, the Verein fur Raumschiffart E. V rt ( Society forSpace Navigation ) was formed in Bres1au. The socie ty included most of the German enthusias ts ., The socie ty buil t a ser iesof small rockets , t rying to bui ld a succesful rocket motor.Liquid fuel was introduced instead of the sol id fuel of a l lprevious rockets. Other socie t ies sprang up a l love r theworld,but none as active as the German one. Research went ona l l ove r the world. In 1934, the German socie ty was broughtto an abrubt end. At the order of Adolph Hit le r the socie tywas disbanded and the members put to work designing rocketsfor war. The ,nrrui ts of the i r labor can be seen in the manyGerman rocket weapons; the nebelwarfer, a six barreled rocketmortar, the rocket-armed and rocket-propelled f ighter planes,e tc . The V-2 is merely an enlarged and improved version ofthe small German rocket ship.

Whether the rocket remains a weapon af ter th i swar, or whether they return to the fourth of July s ta te aga i n,is a moot p o n t but of one thing his tory assures us, in thenext war, or the one af te r i t the rocket wil l be back.Developed in peace to aid man, t wil l help to destroy him.


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BIBLIOGRAPHYCleator, P. E. Rockets Through Space.New York; Simon Schuster. 1936.Ley, W Shells and Shooting. n.New York; Modern Age Books'. 1942

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A Brief History of the Rocket (February 7, 1945)