The History of Rockets; In the Beginning.

Most researchers probably consider the ancient Chinese as establishing the very modest beginnings to what we now know as rocketry. It seems the Chinese were the first to start using gunpowder, which formed the rudimentary start of solid rocket fuels. Record has it that late in the third century, bamboo tubes filled with saltpeter, sulfur and charcoal were tossed in ceremonial fires with hopes that the resulting explosions would ward off evil sprits. Quite probably, some of these imperfect tubes, rather than exploding, would shoot out of the fires, producing unintentional rockets. With this in mind as time marched on, another 700 years or so, Chinese military tactics included the use of gunpowder and rockets.

One of the first devices to successfully employ the principles essential to rocket flight was a wooden bird. In ancient Roman writings there is a story of a Greek named Archytas who lived in the city of Tarentum, which is now a part of southern Italy. Somewhere around the year 400 BC, this Greek mystified and amused his fellow citizens by flying a pigeon made of wood. It appears that this wooden model was suspended on wires and propelled along by escaping steam. The pigeon used the action-reaction principle that was not to be stated as a scientific law until the seventeenth century.

By the beginning of the 13th century, the Chinese Sung Dynasty had become resourceful enough to incorporate this new gunpowder and rudimentary rocket technology to counter threats from the growing Mongolian hordes. And apparently they were quite successful in building weapons to function as intended. So for the next two or three hundred years, military weapons of this sort propagated throughout Europe and Asia, thus building a solid foundation in the establishment of the history of rockets.

Rockets, it seems, made their way to the New World during the War of 1812. During the Battle of Bladensburg on August 24, 1814, the British army used rockets against an American rifle battalion. It has been reported that a British Lieutenant witnessed the Americans’ response to this new threat and was quoted as saying, “Never did men with arms in their hands make better use of their legs”. This struck me as quite a humorous observation, so I had to include it here.

As the 19th century wore on, rocket technology made its way westward in the war against Mexico. The newly formed US Army Battalion of Rocketeers, used their new weapons on several occasions and helped bring about the defeat of the Mexican armies. And with typical governmental foresight, after the war, the rocketeers were disbanded and the remaining rockets went into storage where they slowly deteriorated and could not be used at all. So then next major step in the history of rockets in the New World came during the Civil War. New ones were manufactured and rockets were used brother against brother with rather limited success, if you want to call that success.

If the military was having only limited success with rocket technology, another industry of the 1800s was using rockets more successfully, although today many would argue, not morally. The whaling industry was using rocket-powered harpoons to bring in their daily supply of whale products, which was very common then. So rockets continued to be a means of using weapons against each other as well as our ecological environment. But toward the end of the 19th century and the ushering in of the 20th century, a few foresighted individuals were starting to look at more beneficial uses of rockets. Those of space travel, although these new directions of theory and manufacture would also lead to some of the most destructive weapons delivery systems of our times. This phase of the history of rockets will be continued on other pages of my website, if you care to use the menu at the left to find them.

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