Rocket mail

The postal rocket is a missile developed in the 1930s for the conveyance of letters. It has a primitive, single-stage drive and has a compartment for mail within the head of the rocket. Since the rocket is used only once and much to be desired from both the accuracy and the cost of left something, they never came from the outset for commercial application. They also failed because of the time quicka development of air transport, which could do the job much cheaper.

First Start

The first rocket mail was successfully ignited on February 2, 1931 by the living in Graz researchers Friedrich Schmiedl on the Schoeckl located north of Graz. From him came already ideas from 1914, at the age of 12 years, post dislodge with a rocket from Przemysl. However, these were not taken seriously. The remote-controlled rocket " V 7" ​​( V for test rocket ) reached the village of St. Radegund in about five miles away and landed using a parachute. It transported 102 letters. The first in Austria as regularly respected mail rocket was the " R 1", which was ignited by Schmiedl on September 9, 1931 in the municipality of Semriach. In the series were still carried out by him some more successful mailings of this kind.

The failure of an idea

Schmiedl before floated to use rocket mail for carriage of postal items between hard to reach mountain villages and between large cities, but the idea was at the competent Austrian postal officials are offensive.

Similar ideas existed at the same time also in Germany. Example, it was thought of a rocket mail line Berlin- Cologne, and elsewhere, the designer Gerhard Zucker launched in 1933 several rocket mail in Cuxhaven and resin. But again, the idea did not prevail. As sugar in 1934 his ideas about this type of letter and postcard promotion outlining the Nazi authorities, his research funds were offered to instead equip its missiles with bombs, what sugar declined and consequently took him in the new regime into disrepute. Then emigrated to Great Britain, tried sugar there to interest the authorities for the use of rocket mail. Successful experiments in the county of Sussex brought media coverage ( "First British rocket mail " ) and made ​​her think of a sugar rocket mail connection between Dover and Calais. However, a subsequent technically unsuccessful demonstration on 31 July 1934 officials in the Outer Hebrides islands prevented a success.

Back in Germany, sugar undertook yet in the 1970s experiments with rocket mail launch. But even after a student at Brown situation had come in the Harz died in the course of such experiments in 1964, the legislation was changed so that henceforth the firing of rockets with a flight altitude above 100 m has been prohibited by private individuals.

In Austria, the idea of ​​a rocket mail was earlier to end. Although Friedrich Schmiedl dreamed of, among others, one rocket mail line Ljubljana -Graz- Bern, but had to abandon his projects through new legislation of 1934. At that time, the possession of explosives, which was necessary for missile firings, punishable by law.

Importance for Philately

Already from the beginning to the postal rocket had a meaning for philatelists. Both Schmiedl as well as sugar expenditure from own philatelic collectibles with special motifs that were associated with the mail rocket. For example, Zucker had brought out in England envelopes that were intended for the transport of the rocket, and the occasion of the launch of the rocket Post by Schmiedl was from him a stamp block issued in four design variants with a total run of 1200. With the proceeds from the sales of the rocket mail experiments were funded.

However, this procedure had significant implications for both researchers. Both the British and the Austrian Postal saw it as a business competition and initiated an appropriate action. The British Royal Mail looked at sugar as a " threat to the income of the post and for the security of the country ", which meant that the researcher was sent back to Germany. The Austrian post office who issued a decree that forbade the issue of private value characters, so Schmiedl thus lost an important source of income.

In honor of the Austrian pioneer of rocket mail took place in 1992 launches of models of the rocket type "Thor" at the 90th birthday of Friedrich Schmiedl in Semriach May 14 to 16. In 2002, organized by the Philatelic Society at Graz Schmiedl 100th birthday such missile launches in Semriach.