William Hale (21 October 1797 – 30 March 1870), was a

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inventor An invention is a unique or novel device, method, composition, idea or process. An invention may be an improvement upon a machine, product, or process for increasing efficiency or lowering cost. It may also be an entirely new concept. If an ...

and

rocket A rocket (from it, rocchetto, , bobbin/spool) is a vehicle that uses jet propulsion to accelerate without using the surrounding air. A rocket engine produces thrust by reaction to exhaust expelled at high speed. Rocket engines work entirely fr ...

pioneer.

Biography

Hale was born in

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in 1797. He was self-taught although his grandfather, the educator William Cole, is believed to have tutored him. By 1827 he had obtained his first patent; he also won a first class Gold Medal of the

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for his paper on ship propulsion using an early form of jet propulsion. Hale was inducted into the

International Space Hall of Fame The New Mexico Museum of Space History is a museum and planetarium complex in Alamogordo, New Mexico dedicated to artifacts and displays related to space flight and the Space Age. It includes the International Space Hall of Fame. The Museum of S ...

in 2004.

Rocketry

In 1844, Hale patented a new form of rotary rocket that improved on the earlier

Congreve rocket The Congreve rocket was a type of rocket artillery designed by British inventor Sir William Congreve in 1808. The design was based upon the rockets deployed by the Kingdom of Mysore against the East India Company during the Second, Third, an ...

design. Hale removed the guidestick from the design, instead vectoring part of the thrust through canted exhaust holes to provide rotation of the rocket, which improved its stability in flight. These rockets could weigh up to 60 pounds (27 kg) and were noted for their glare and noise on ignition. Hale rockets were first used by the

United States Army The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cla ...

in the

Mexican–American War The Mexican–American War, also known in the United States as the Mexican War and in Mexico as the (''United States intervention in Mexico''), was an armed conflict between the United States and Mexico from 1846 to 1848. It followed the 1 ...

of 1846–1848. Although the

British Army The British Army is the principal land warfare force of the United Kingdom, a part of the British Armed Forces along with the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. , the British Army comprises 79,380 regular full-time personnel, 4,090 Gurk ...

experimented with Hale rockets during the

Crimean War The Crimean War, , was fought from October 1853 to February 1856 between Russia and an ultimately victorious alliance of the Ottoman Empire, France, the United Kingdom and Piedmont-Sardinia. Geopolitical causes of the war included the de ...

of 1853–1856 they did not officially adopt them until 1867. In the

American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states th ...

of 1861-1865 the Union forces deployed the Hale rocket launcher, a metal tube that fired 7-inch (18 cm) and 10-inch (25 cm) long spin-stabilized rockets up to 2,000 yards (1.8 km). It was only generally used by the U.S. Navy.

References

Bibliography

* Frank H. Winter, ''The first golden age of rocketry: Congreve and Hale rockets of the nineteenth century'', (Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1990), p. 321 illus.

External links

19th-century British inventors 1870 deaths 1797 births Early rocketry {{UK-engineer-stub