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From looking at historical reports, the observatories that were built from way back all over the world to see the heavenly skies, we can see that humans were fascinated with reading the skies and dreamed of going to space. This was no small dream since it took quite a few centuries for us to develop the technology to fly and then finally escape earth's orbit. The Chinese and Mesopotamians were the first civilizations to use rockets as fireworks.Rockets gained popularity as weapons by the Chinese during their wars with Mongols and were used in wars against the Arabs. It was in the 20th century that rockets and space technology evolved and man was finally able to achieve space travel.
3100BC : StoneHenge must've been an astronomical site to observe skies.
1232 B.C : Chinese first used gunpowder filled tubes and discovered that they were being propelled by the escaping gases and thus the first true
rocket was born. They filled a tube with gun powder closed on one side and open at the other end and attached the whole tube on a stick to give it a straight direction.
1258 B.C :
Rockets arrive in Baghdad when Mongols fought against
400 B.C : Archytas amused the citizens of Tarentum by flying a wooden pigeon. He used the action and reaction principle even before it was stated as a scientific law. Escaping steam propelled the bird suspended on wires.
700B.C : Heron of Alexandria, invented a
rocket-like device called an aeolipile. It used steam as a propulsive gas.
15th Century
1402
: Konrad Kyeser wrote his treatise between 1402 and 1405 when he was exiled from Prague to his hometown of Eichstatt.He wrote Bellifortis, this was the first mnaul with illustrations of war weaponry which included
rockets.
16th Century:
German Johann Schmidlap a fireworks maker invented the multistep
rocket. A large
rocket had smaller
rockets which started firing off when the large one died out.
1571 : Johannes Kepler described the 3 laws of planetary motion.
17th Century
1650 : A Polish military expert, Kazimierz Siemienowicz made a series of drawings on
rockets.
1668 : A German Christoph von Geissler did experiments on
rockets weighning about 25-55 kilograms.
1687 : Isaac Newton came up with the three gravitational laws.
1696 : Robert Anderson an English Scientist presented a treatise on how to make
rockets,propllents with calculations.
18th century
1783 : In Annonay,
France the first manned balloon was demonstrated.
1798 : Tipu Sultan a King from South of India used
rockets in warfare against the British.
19th Century
1803 : Willian Congreve of England developed military
rockets. they calle dthem the Congreve
rockets. the British used them in America.
1806 : Claude Ruggiere tried launching animals with
rockets. He then used parachutes which were tied to them to retrieve them back.I wonder if they come back alive.
1813 : The first
rocket equation was written by William Moore.
1865 : Jules Verne wrote about launching man on the moon using
rockets.
1883 : Tsiolkovsky came up with mathematical formulas for space travel and talked about zero gravity. He also mentions about multi stage
rockets which he thought was the only way to go to space.
Link Keywords:
History of Rocket, Timeline of Rocket