Treatise on multistage rockets and delta fins (Siemienowicz)
Tratado de cohetes de varias etapas y aletas delta (Siemienowicz)
- Date
- 1650 · confidence high
- Place
- Amsterdam, North Holland, Netherlands
- Credited to
- Kazimierz Siemienowicz
- Field
- Conflict
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
The Polish-Lithuanian artillery general described in 'Artis Magnae Artilleriae pars prima' multistage rockets, rocket batteries and delta-wing stabilising fins. It was Europe's standard artillery treatise for a century.
Siemienowicz was born in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and wrote the book in Latin while serving the United Provinces; it was published in Amsterdam. Priority for multistage rockets is debated: the Chinese Huolongjing describes two-stage rockets around the 14th century.
What it led to
- European diffusion of black-powder rocket engineering
- the staged-rocket concept later taken up by 20th-century astronautics
- a military pyrotechnics manual translated into French, German, English and Dutch