Rockets.

The American Rocket Society’s 1946 reprint, in a single volume, of the two Smithsonian papers on which, as the jacket puts it, all modern jet propulsion and rocket engineering are based: A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes (first published 1919) and Liquid-Propellant Rocket Development (first published 1936). The title page is faced by a portrait of Dr. Goddard. The reprint appeared after Goddard’s death in August 1945.

A new Foreword by Goddard, written in 1945, compares the state of the art in 1919 with the achievements of the war years. He observes that smokeless-powder rockets had grown in size and control but not in jet velocity, that liquid-fuel rockets had advanced considerably, and that his conclusions on high jet velocity, light construction and the step-rocket principle remained sound. Separate prefaces introduce each paper, and the original plates and figures are reproduced.

The book ends with “Dr. Robert H. Goddard — A Biographical Note and Appreciation” by G. Edward Pendray, which does not appear in the Smithsonian originals. Compare the later ARS publication of Goddard’s Rocket Development (1948), also in Catalog C, and the original Smithsonian pamphlet Liquid-Propellant Rocket Development (1936), also in the collection, in Catalog A. The jacket back reprints a passage from the Preface and an ARS statement of purpose.