FIRST STEPS TOWARD SPACE - Smithsonian Institution Libraries

15
Ludvik OcenaSek: Czech Rocket Experimenter
RUDOLPH PESEK AND IVO BUDIL, Czechoslovakia
The first Czechoslovak rockets were launched at
the end of the 1920s. The largest public demonstration,
of a whole range of rockets, including twostage
ones, was held on 2 March 1930 near Czechoslovakia's
capital city Prague. The rockets, some
of which are shown in Figure 1, were about 20
inches in length and one at least reached the remarkable
altitude, for that time, of 4,700 feet.
They were designed, constructed and tested by
the Czech inventor and entrepreneur Ludvik Ocenasek
(1872-1949). This typically self-made man
had an unusually wide span of interests, both technical
and political, which warrants our interest in
his life work. He is shown in Figure 2 with his son,
Miroslav, a graduate electrical engineer who worked
with his father on one of the latter's projects, a
hydrodynamic boat.
Born into a poor mining family, Ludvik Ocenasek
taught himself to be a mechanic, and while
working at that trade succeeded in completing his
education in a middle vocational school. At the age
of 22, after working in a patent office, he opened in
Prague his own machine shop which in time grew
into a medium-sized industrial plant. At first his
plant limited itself to electrical appliances, but
later proved equally successful in producing a
variety of technical developments such as an improved
bicycle; crystals for radio receivers; a system
of underground loudspeakers that he perfected
and produced for stadiums; and eventually new
machines for the pharmaceutical industry, and military
weapons. His enterprise did not restrict itself
to the mass production of existing products, however;
the plant also produced the new inventions
Ocenasek had patented. His original workshop,
where he developed his first "noiseless" machinegun,
is shown in Figure 3.
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Creativity marked his entire life, from the merrygo-round
he designed and constructed at the age of
eight to the new type of recoil device for firearms—
for which a patent was awarded to him two days
after his death on 10 August 1949. In the first decade
of the 20th century, his interest centered on aviation.
In 1905 Ocenasek designed and built an aeronautical
rotary engine (Figure 4), which was similar
to the subsequently famous French Gnome engine.
This eight-cylinder radial rotary engine was introduced
in 1908 at the industrial exposition in
Prague. A letter describing it was published in the
French review Le Monde Industriel. 1 The motor is
preserved in Prague's Technical Museum. Another
French journal, Encyclopedic Contemporaine 2 ,
praised Ocenasek's engine for its light weight and
high output. It developed 12 horsepower and
weighed only 165 pounds (13.8 lb/hp).
Ocenasek of course built his radial rotary airplane
engine because he wanted to fly. In 1910 and
1911 he built a monoplane which ranged among the
largest aircraft of its time (see Figure 4). It had a
wing span of 39 feet (12 m), an over-all length of
36 feet (11 m), and its propeller diameter was 8i/2
feet (2.6 m). Its "Gnome type" rotary engine developed
50 horsepower. The plane's total loaded
weight, with pilot, 75 kilograms of fuel and 8 kilograms
of lubricant, amounted to approximately
1325 pounds (600 kg). The entire flying machine
could be transported in three crates and assembled
in two hours.
In this plane, through constant improvements,
Ocenasek on 30 November 1910 attained a maximum
flight distance of not quite 100 feet (30 m).
However, when his chief mechanic Serntner, during
a test flight in 1911, lost control and the plane
burned, Ocenasek was obliged to abandon his ex-