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New Book: Stephen H Smith: India’s Forgotten Rocket Pioneer

By Gurbir Dated: August 30, 2019 5 Comments

A new book provides a detailed account of the life and work of Stephen H Smith.

Now available. For discount codes and purchase options look here.

During 1934 and 1944 in Calcutta, he worked alone and unsupported on developing rocket transport. In 1935, he was the first to demonstrate the successful transport by a rocket of livestock, food and medicine.

The book charts the story of Stephen H Smith, described by a contemporary as “the greatest one-man campaign for rocketry”. He dedicated his life working alone in northeast India to develop a new revolutionary means of transport using rocket power.

The development of rockets in India is commonly understood to have ended with Tipu Sultan in 1799 and started again in 1963 with what is now called the Indian Space Research Organisation. However, in the intervening period, rockets were built, and championed by one man, working alone in Calcutta. In 1925 he set up the Indian Air Mail Society and it is amongst the philatelic community globally where his work is still known but is almost entirely forgotten from the popular imagination in India.

On 14 February 1891, Stephen H Smith, the only son of a tea plantation manager originally from Norfolk, England was born in the Strawberry Hill region of Shillong. Between 1934 and 1944, he conducted over 200 rocket experiments to demonstrate the utility of a rocket as a means of transport.

The 20th century was the harbinger for new revolutionary means of transport. Trains, airships, aeroplanes and automobiles were the key technologies fueling the developed nations. Mesmerised by aeroplanes as a child he engaged head-on with the new and transformative technology of rockets as an adult. In September 1934, he conducted his first rocket experiment to transport mail from a ship on the Hooghly River to the Sagar Island. In the decade that followed he conducted over 200 experiments. He built multi-staged rockets, and boomerang rockets and tested compressed air and gas as propellants. Like many early rocket mail experimenters, he supported his experiments financially by flying specially designed souvenir covers on his rockets. These flown items carrying his recognisable signature are spread around the world and even today can fetch up to $20,000 each.

Small self-funded groups to develop rockets were established in USSR, USA, Britain, Australia and Germany. It was from these groups that Sergei Korolev and Wernher von Braun emerged and competed in the epic space race that resulted in Sputnik, Gagarin and Apollo 11. Stephen H Smith was their contemporary but worked alone and unsupported in India. This book reveals the challenges faced by one man working alone at the forefront of new ground-breaking technology.

Long after he had died, he was inducted into the Hall of Fame by the American Airmail Society in 1989. In 1992, a year after the centenary of his birth, the Indian government celebrated his achievements by issuing a stamp and a first-day cover dedicated to his work. Today his work is found in official NASA publications, the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society and in the National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC.

Smith’s work inspired a science fiction story during his lifetime. Human achievements in space – the Apollo programme, the International Space Station and India’s accomplishments including Mars Orbiter Mission at Mars and Chadrayaan on the Moon owe more than just inspiration to those early rocket pioneers during the early 1930s around the world including Stephen Smith in India.

A new study of his contacts with the King of Sikkim, with King George V, with a member of parliament in London and a 25 year-long correspondence with a Swiss philatelist reveal in his own words his struggle to attain recognition and support for his work. His reluctant attempt to work with the military authorities in India during World War II ended in frustration. His multiple attempts in 1949 to contact the Governor of Bengal and Prime Minister Nehru in the newly independent India failed to generate a response.

Stephen Smith lived and worked through some of the darkest periods of the 20th century, the Great Depression, World War Two, the Bengal Famine and the post-Indian Independence riots in Calcutta. In December 1950 his mentor and friend in Switzerland Dr Robert Paganini died leaving him, someone he had never spoken with or ever met, a part of his will. Sadly, Stephen Smith himself died two months later.

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Episode 72: Satish Dhawan Space Centre

By Gurbir Dated: June 1, 2015 Leave a Comment

ep72
From left to right. V. Seshagiri Rao Associate director, Dr M.Y.S. Prasad SDSC director, Dr S.V. Subba Rao Deputy Director

Located about 80km from Chennai on India’s east coast, Satish Dhawan Space centre is used by ISRO to launch all of its satellites including those to the Moon and Mars. Also known as Sriharikota, it was established during the late 1960s but today it has a vehicle assembly building, two launch pads and a state of the art mission control centre.

In this episode, Dr MYS Prasad, the director at Satish Dhawan Space Centre describes the key services and activities that take place at India’s 21st century rocket launch complex. This interview was recorded in January 2014 and Dr Prasad stood down as director on 31st May 2015.

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Episode 68: Stephen H Smith – India’s forgotten rocketeer

By Gurbir Dated: May 6, 2014 2 Comments

On 25th May 2012 the privately funded company, SpaceX used a rocket to transport supplies from the surface of the Earth to the International Space Station 400km above. Although completely incomparable in scope, the first ever delivery of supplies using rocket power took place 77 years earlier in India. The delivery of first aid materials and even the transport of living beings entirely by rocket power was demonstrated by practical experiment in 1935. Now almost forgotten, these experiments were conducted by a Calcutta based Anglo Indian called Stephen Hector Taylor-smith, usually abbreviated to Stephen H. Smith.

Stephen Smith Credit Superior Galaries
Stephen H. Smith Photo: Superior Galeries

Smith launched almost 300 rockets between 1934 and 1945 working mostly unfunded and primarily alone. At 15:35 on April 10th 1935, Smith used a rocket to deliver a parcel containing 12 items including a packet of tea, sugar, spoon, toothbrush and cigarettes about a kilometre across a river. In the aftermath of a devastating earthquake, he illustrated the advantages of rocket powered transport to cover difficult terrain quickly. On 6th June 1935, he successfully launched a  small consignment of first aid material consisting of rolls of bandages, lint, iodine and aspirin over the river Rupnarayan  in west Bengal.

Smith’s 65th rocket launch conducted on the morning of the 29th June 1935 was unique in its cargo and ambition. He demonstrated that living beings and not just inanimate objects could be transported by rockets. In a record making flight, rocket power was used to transport a hen and a cock about 1km across a river. Smith had added stabilising fins, cut almond shaped holes for ventilation and built shock absorbing properties in to the rocket design. The rocket did not employ a parachute, the soft sandy bank was critical and even to Smith’s surprise the hen and cock survived. Both flourished for at least 18 months in a private zoo in Calcutta (today known as  Kolkata).

During the early 20th century, the story of rocket development is told through the cumulative contributions of  iconic names such as Herman Oberth, Wernher von Braun, Sergei Korolev and Robert Goddard. Smith’s contribution cannot be compared to their work but his work was not insignificant and has been mostly forgotten.

Smith was not a trained scientist or engineer. Eventually he tested different types of rocket fuels, fins for attitude control and even designed a rocket to carry a camera to capture aerial images. Initially he was doing not much more than lighting the blue touch-paper of a traditional firework and then standing back. But he was a man of vision and conducted numerous practical experiments to understand and promulgate the potential of rocket power as a mechanism for transport.

Not much is known about his personal life. Smith was born in 1891 in Shillong, Assam. He was an Anglo Indian, a group of people with a European (usually British) lineage and officially recognised in the Indian constitution.  Not much is known about his parents. His father, Charles William Bath Taylor was born in Brigg in the County of Lincolnshire.  His mother, Arabella Martin was the daughter of an English tea planter and probably of mixed heritage.  He attended St Patrick’s Boys School in Asansol in West Bengal, established originally by the Christian Brothers from Southern Ireland.  It was a school for Anglo Indian boys that he joined in 1903, the same year that the Wright brothers successfully demonstrated flight in an aeroplane.

The first aeroplanes to fly in India, did so relatively close to Asansol. On January 6th 1911, during Smith’s final year at school,  more than 750, 000 people gathered at the Calcutta racecourse to witness first hand the magic of man-made flying machines. Smith must have known about the event, he was probably amongst the huge crowd. In the following month, on 18th February 1911 with a formal sanction from the Indian Postal Service, the world’s first official airmail consisting of about 6000 cards and letters was flown from Allahabad to the town of Naini ten kilometres away. It is possible that this experience ignited an interest in aviation, airmail and eventually rockets that stayed with him for the rest of his life.

The First World War had accelerated the development of aviation in the same way that the Second World War did for rocketry. In the early 1920’s, India saw the introduction of aerial transport of cargo, regular airmail and scheduled passenger flights. Smith took an interest in tracking and recording developments in airmail just as steam engine locomotives had attracted enthusiasts in the past and as spaceflight does today.

Pigeongram addressed to Stephen Smith’s home address  Photo: Grosvenor auctions

A global revolution was taking place in ariel transport just when Smith was starting out on his adult life. He had already been involved in Pigeon mail when the potential for airmail arrived. In the early 1930s it was unclear then what form of transport would triumph in the near future airships, aeroplanes or rockets. The first airmail service from Britain to India was conducted by Imperial Airways. The flight left Croydon airport on 30th March 1929 arriving in Karachi on 6th April. On the return flight on the following day, Smith sent a letter to the King at Buckingham Palace in London. The King’s Private Secretary responded on 19th April on behalf of the King “to thank Mr Stephen H. Smith for the letter which he sent to his Majesty by the first flight from India to Great Britain”.

Philately was Smith’s primary preoccupation throughout his adult life. During the 1920s he founded the Calcutta Philatelic Club and the Aero Philatelic Club of India (which changed its name to the Indian Airmail Society on 19th January 1930). Almost all of his rocket launches contained signed souvenir covers and specially designed rocket mail stamps.

Smith's Rocketgram stamps. There were 4 different colours, 2000 of each were printed.
Smith’s Rocketgram stamps. There were 4 different colours, 2000 of each were printed Photo: Gurbir Singh

For his first trip to Sikkim in April 1935, he sought and was granted permission to print rocket gram stamps in four different colours. Two thousand of each colour were printed. His rocket launches received international press coverage. In July, Smith received a request in writing (via the King of Sikkim) from a Mr A. W. Macintyre from New Jersey in USA. He sought covers from each of Smith’s seven rocket flights.  These flown covers were highly sought after by collectors then and are still today.

Smith hand drawn map from his book
Smith hand drawn map from his book – Credit: Stephen H Smith

In addition to the regular newsletters for the Indian Airmail Society, Smith wrote “Indian Airways”, a work in three volumes detailing the first and special flights within and through India up to March 1930. In 1927, he authored a small book, “The World Flyer’s Danger Zone” covering the hazards of mail flights south east from Calcutta across the Bay of Bengal to Burma and Thailand. He dedicated the book and its proceeds to the widow of Arthur B Elliott who was killed on July 4th 1926. Smith had met Elliott personally in 1925.

By early 1930s rocket mail experiments were being conducted in America, Europe and Australia. Smith was the only one launching rockets in India. He experimented with rockets launches from ship to shore, shore to ship, at night time, across rough terrain and across rivers.

Smith recorded information about his flights, including sketches in his diary and took many pictures. The rockets were launched at a variety of angles, 30, 45 even 80 degrees.  He recorded details of the wind speed and direction and the distance the rocket covered for every launch. He does not appear to have used any instruments to measure altitude, distance or speed so the measurements are likely to have been qualitative rather than quantitative. His largest rocket weighed about 7kg with a total length of around 2m. The payload was typically about half a kilogram but larger rockets were capable of carrying a kilogram.

In February 1936, Smith joined the British Interplanetary Society (BIS) that had been founded in Liverpool three years earlier. He was probably the BIS’s first member from India. The BIS was one of many societies around the world established to promote the development of rocket technology and its application for space travel. Through the BIS’s bulletin and journal which reflected the contribution of its international membership, Smith would have been aware of the technological developments in rocketry worldwide but there is no evidence of how much of what he learnt he put in to practice in his own experiments.

After the start of the Second World War, Smith appears to reduce the details he recorded and published on his rocket experiments. In 1940, he attempted two rocket launches carrying brownie cameras with an intension to take aerial pictures. Neither succeeded. By December 1944, still based in Calcutta, Smith was experimenting with compressed air and compressed gas instead of traditional solid fuel as a means of rocket propulsion.

King of Sikkim with one of Smith's rockets
King of Sikkim with one of Smith’s rockets Credit: From the diary of Stephen H Smith

Despite his pioneering work with rockets he probably did not accomplish his ambitions. He visited the kingdom of Sikkim twice in 1935 to conduct his rocket experiments. On the second time he took his wife and son with him. The king of Sikkim not only supported Smith’s work but actively participated in his experiments by personally igniting some of the rockets. On April 11th 1935, following a successful firing of his rocket number fifty four, a certificate was awarded to him in the presence of the king. This formal recognition was “certifying the utility of the rocket as a means of transport during floods and landslips”. Smith wanted to realise the potential of rocket power for transport for mail and materials just as he was witnessing aeroplanes doing so in his time. His  limited skills and resources prevented him from making significant advances. In 1992, a year after the centenary of his birth the Indian government celebrated his achievements by issuing a stamp and first day cover dedicated to him and his work.

Commemorative stamp 1992 - Credit: Philately World
Commemorative stamp 1992 Credit: Philately World

Not much is known of his personal life. After leaving school, Smith worked briefly at the customs department in Calcutta before joining the Calcutta police force as a Round Sergeant on 18th March 1913 on a salary of 100 rupees per month. Whilst with the police, he successfully completed his training as a dentist. His time with the Calcutta police was otherwise uneventful and he resigned on the 4th December 1914. It was as a dentist that he served in the First World War after which he continued in this profession with a private dental practice based at his home address, on 25A Elliot Road in Calcutta.

He married Fay Harcourt in 1918, most probably another Anglo Indian that he had known at least since 1913. They had one son Hector, who did not share his father’s interests. Smith died in 1951 and his wife in 1985 and both are buried in Kolkata. His son Hector married and had a son whose name is not known and daughter, Gloria. The son grew up with learning disability and was sent to an institution. Hector with his wife and daughter Gloria emigrated to Britain. hector died fairly soon after arrival in Britain. Eventually Gloria too got married and had a daughter called Lucy. As Smith’s only living decedent, Lucy may be living somewhere in Britain today.

Smith's house in Kolkata - 2014
Smith’s house in Kolkata – 2014 Photo: Gurbir Singh

The following clip is an interview with Mr Melvyn Brown. An anglo Indian who writes on Anglo Indian topics, he lives on Elliot Road in Kolkata, a short walking distance from where Smith lived. He never met Stephen Smith but near the end of this short interviews, he recalls his meeting with Smith’s son Hector.

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Episode 67: Technik Museum Speyer

By Gurbir Dated: February 3, 2014 Leave a Comment

IMG_3306This episode is a preview of some of the space related exhibits in Europe’s largest aerospace museum – Speyer Technik Museum, in Germany. If you ever go and the following may entice you to do so,  four space exhibits to look out for include the following:

Soyuz TM19 – The landing capsule Soyuz TM-19 was used by the German astronaut Ulf Merbold to return to Earth on 4th November 1994 following his launch in Soyuz TM-20 on 3rd October 1994.

Buran – The Soviet Space shuttle Buran was a the Soviet response to the American Space Shuttle. Two complete working vehicles were made.  The Buran was unmanned and, although reusable, was never actually reused. One made a single flight to space and was later destroyed when the hangar housing it collapsed. The other made 25 test flights also unmanned but only in Earth atmosphere.  Following an unexpected find in the Persian Gulf by German journalists, it was brought to Speyer in 2008.

Bor-5 – To assist the Soviets’ design of the Buran they built and flew BOR-5 – a  1:8 scale model of the Buran. Bor-5  made five unmanned sub-orbital test flights between 1984 and 1988.

Moon rock – One of the largest pieces of Moonrock I have seen on public display. It is from Apollo 15 mission but was unveiled at the Museum in June 2013 by Apollo 17 astronaut Gene Cernan. 

If you do go, it is is a big place – one day is not enough!

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