Notification of a Grant to Colonel William Congreve
Copy of the original notification of the Prince Regent’s pleasure for the grant of a pension of £1,200 per annum to Colonel, now Sir, William Congreve, in remuneration of his invention of rockets, dated 5 April 1814. Ordered printed by the House of Commons, 25 May 1815. British parliamentary papers of this period are rare; provision for sale to the public was not made until 1836.
La Travesía de los Andes en Globo.
First-person account of the first balloon crossing of the Andes, Santiago to Uspallata, June 24, 1916, closer to a flight diary than a polished narrative. Illustrated throughout by Bradley with his own diagrams, including a fold-out map of the route and a profile chart of the peaks the balloon cleared. First and only edition; no later printing or reissue recorded. Three exemplars in the collection, identical apart from condition.
Featured
Crossing the Andes by Balloon
›
“Death Rocket Rains Fiery Metal”
Unsigned article on Ernest Welsh’s anti-aircraft “death rocket,” profiled the following year in Vestnik Znaniya, also in this collection. Welsh, an amateur inventor of North Ferriby, East Yorkshire, claimed his three-foot rocket could climb five miles and burst a charge of 700 molten-metal pellets over a 100-square-yard area, a barrage he proposed for defending cities against air raids. Popular Science Monthly, November 1924, p.40.
Vestnik Znaniya [The Herald of Knowledge], 1925: Complete Year (Nos. 1–24), Bound.
Complete bound year of Vestnik Znaniya (“The Herald of Knowledge”), a Leningrad popular-science monthly, all twenty-four 1925 numbers as one volume. No. 8 (p.581) reports on Robert Goddard’s “lunar rocket” project. No. 3 (p.231) profiles Ernest Welsh’s “death rocket,” an anti-aircraft weapon also reported in Popular Science Monthly, November 1924, also in this collection. The year-end double number (pp.1343-1350) surveys Tsiolkovsky’s rocket design and Kibalchich’s 1881 proposal, also in this collection.
Liquid Propellant Rocket Development (Scientific American Reprint)
Goddard’s own account of his first successful flight of a liquid-fuel rocket, published across two consecutive issues of Scientific American: August 1936 (pp. 78–80) and September 1936 (pp. 148–151), in original pictorial wrappers. Considered Goddard’s second most significant publication after his 1920 Smithsonian monograph on reaching extreme altitudes. Also included: G. Edward Pendray’s profile of Goddard, “Number One Rocket Man — A Silhouette of the Shy Massachusetts Physicist Who Pioneered in Rocket Research,” Scientific American, May 1938, pp. 270–272 (front cover marred, affecting a few letters of text). Related to the Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections pamphlet Liquid-Propellant Rocket Development, also available in this collection.
Ad for Rockets Through Space.
An advertisement for P. E. Cleator’s book: Rockets Through Space, available in this collection. Quotes the editor’s scientific advisor and the book’s preface. Includes a printed form in the last page to request copies of Cleator’s book.
“Space Navigation by Rocket,” “Sky-Rocketing Through Space,” and “Where Is Rocketry Today?”
Three rocket articles from Popular Aviation’s 1937 volume. Alvin Edward Moore’s two-part “Space Navigation by Rocket” (Feb.) and “Sky-Rocketing Through Space” (Apr.) survey rocket history from Heron of Alexandria to Goddard’s Roswell work. Charles G. Philp’s “Where Is Rocketry Today?” (Oct.) gives the fullest account, tracing Goddard back to his 1919 pamphlet and the Guggenheim-funded Roswell flights; Philp’s own 1935 book on the subject is also in this collection. Moore: Popular Aviation, February 1937, pp.27-28, 66-67; April 1937, pp.35-36, 62. Philp: Popular Aviation, October 1937, pp.49, 70.
Eight Days in the History of Rocketry
Ley’s survey of key moments in the modern history of rocketry, written from his perspective as a former leader of the German rocket society (Verein für Raumschiffahrt), not long after his emigration to the United States following the Nazi seizure of German rocketry research. Appeared in Thrilling Wonder Stories, Vol. 10, No. 3 (December 1937); the cover itself bills the piece simply as “Rockets by Willy Ley, World’s Foremost Authority.” Also in the collection: Ley’s book Rockets (1944) and his two-part Astounding Science Fiction article “The End of the Rocket Society” (1943).
“Seeking Power for Space Rockets” and “New Experiments With Rockets”
Two 1940 articles on the Caltech GALCIT rocket group later nicknamed the “Suicide Squad.” Popular Mechanics’ unsigned “Seeking Power for Space Rockets” (Aug.) surveys Malina, Parsons, and Forman’s fuel and combustion-chamber testing at Caltech. Robert E. Martin’s “New Experiments With Rockets,” in Popular Science Monthly the next month, gives the more personal account, with candid photos of Parsons and Forman at work, testing that became JPL’s founding nucleus. Popular Mechanics: August 1940, pp.210-213, 118A-119A. Popular Science Monthly: September 1940, pp.108-110.
V2 for Ionosphere Research.
The letter to the Editor that inspired geostationary satellites. Available in the original February 1945 issue of Wireless World “An ‘artificial satellite’ at the correct distance from the earth would make one revolution every 24 hours…”
Featured
Arthur C. Clarke
›
Extra-Terrestrial Relays: Can Rocket Stations Give World-wide Radio Coverage?
The article describing geostationary satellites. Available in the October 1945 issue of Wireless World “Using material ferried up by rockets it would be possible to build a ‘space-station’ in such an orbit…”
Featured
Arthur C. Clarke
›
Letter and BIS papers
Personal letter discusses radar work, and mentions his first science fiction stories to be published in Astounding! magazine. One signature probably a copy, the other appears to be original. The short stories are also available in this collection as original issues of Astounding! magazine.
Featured
Arthur C. Clarke
›
Rescue Party and Loophole
Clarke’s first science fiction stories in the original issues of Astounding! Magazine. April 1946 (Rescue Party, p.36) May 1946 (Loophole, p.57)
Featured
Arthur C. Clarke
›
“Life Among the Rockets” and “A Reporter At Large: White Sands”
Two magazine articles on the White Sands V-2 program. Eddy’s piece doesn’t name Wernher von Braun; Lang’s report the next year is likely the first American-magazine appearance of his identity, describing him as the thirty-three-year-old former Peenemünde chief. Lang’s piece was reprinted, retitled “V2s Among the Rattlers,” in his own collection, Early Tales of the Atomic Age (1948), also in this collection. Eddy: The American Magazine, August 1947, pp.28-29, 97-102. Lang: The New Yorker, July 24, 1948, pp.40-46.
La Victoria de las Alas: Historia de la Aviación Argentina.
Documented chronicle of Argentine aviation history by Bradley’s co-pilot on the 1916 crossing, by 1948 a brigadier in the Fuerza Aérea Argentina. This copy is a presentation copy, inscribed by Zuloaga in 1953 to the Chilean hostess who received him at Machalí, and inscribed onward by her in turn. First edition; scarcer than the revised 1958 edition issued with Argentine Air Force backing.
Featured
Crossing the Andes by Balloon
›
L’ Astronef.
First number of this French magazine. Special section on the First Congress of Astronautics. Minutes for the First Congress of Astronautics are available in this collection.
Featured
First Astronautical Congress
›
Astronautica Acta, Vol. I.
Inaugural volume of the official journal of the newly founded International Astronautical Federation, the direct publishing outcome of the founding resolution signed at the Paris 1950 congress (also in this collection). Edited by F. Hecht, with an editorial board reading like a roster of the field: von Braun, Sänger, Oberth, von Kármán, Shepherd, Cleaver, Malina, Tsien, and Tabanera among them, several already represented elsewhere in the collection. Opens with a statement by Wernher von Braun arguing for astronautics as a legitimate discipline, and includes a paper by Irene Sänger-Bredt, credited elsewhere in the collection under her maiden name, J. Bredt, as Eugen Sänger’s co-author on the antipodal-bomber report (A Rocket Drive for Long Range Bombers, 1952).
Revista de la Asociación Argentina Interplanetaria. Vol 4. No. 15.
Announces Argentina joining the International Geophysical Year of 1957, but light on details.
The Conquest of Space.
A complete set of 50 cards issued in 1957 with Cadet Sweets in the UK. Each card depicts steps in the conquest of air and space, from balloons, and the Martin Viking rocket, to fictional moon bases.
Líneas Aéreas y Nacimiento de la Astronáutica en la Argentina.
Zuloaga’s later retrospective, carrying the story of Argentine aviation from the pioneer era into the astronautics age. Retells the 1915 record flights and the 1916 Andes crossing in the author’s own words, more than fifty years on.
Featured
Crossing the Andes by Balloon
›
Die Rakete zu den Planetenräumen.
1984 re-edition of Oberth’s foundational work. Two exemplars in the collection; one signed and dedicated by Oberth to Kyril Serafimov of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.