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The Congreve rocket was a type of rocket artillery designed by British inventor Sir William Congreve in 1808. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] The design was based upon the rockets deployed by the Kingdom of Mysore against the East India Company during the Second , Third , and Fourth Anglo-Mysore Wars .
William Congreve was born in Stafford on 4 July 1742. He and his first wife, Rebecca Elmston, had four children together, two sons and two daughters. [1] His eldest son, William Congreve, invented the Congreve Rocket. [2] His second wife, Julia-Elizabeth Eyre, died aged 78 in 1831. [3] Congreve was made a Baronet on 7 December 1812. [4]
The British armed forces used Congreve's new rockets to great advantage during the Napoleonic and 1812 Wars. In 1939, researchers at the California Institute of Technology seeking to develop a high-performance solid rocket motor to assist aircraft take-off, combined black powder with common road asphalt to produce the first true composite motor.
In the 1780s there was fresh concern over security, quality and economy of supply. The deputy comptroller of the Royal Laboratory at Woolwich, Major, later Lieutenant General, Sir William Congreve advocated that the Waltham Abbey Mills should be purchased by the Crown to ensure secure supplies and to establish what would now be called a centre of excellence for development of manufacturing ...
The British Congreve rockets used 62.4% saltpeter, 23.2% charcoal and 14.4% sulfur, but the British Mark VII gunpowder was changed to 65% saltpeter, 20% charcoal and 15% sulfur. [ citation needed ] The explanation for the wide variety in formulation relates to usage.
British Rockets at Fort McHenry; Congreve, William (1827), A treatise on the general principles, powers, and facility of application of the Congreve Rocket system, as compared with artillery: Illustr. by pl. of the principal exercises and cases of actual service: With a demonstration of the comparative economy of the system. (Longman).
The early Mysorean rockets and their successor British Congreve rockets [59] reduced veer somewhat by attaching a long stick to the end of a rocket (similar to modern bottle rockets) to make it harder for the rocket to change course. The largest of the Congreve rockets was the 32-pound (14.5 kg) Carcass, which had a 15-foot (4.6 m) stick.
One example was the innovative Congreve Rocket, designed and (from 1805) manufactured on site by William Congreve (son of the Comptroller of the Royal Laboratory). Thenceforward rocket manufacture became a key activity, carried out in purpose-built premises on the eastern edge of the site. Part of the early 19th-century Grand Store complex (2014)