FIRST STEPS TOWARD SPACE - Smithsonian Institution Libraries

54 SMITHSONIAN ANNALS OF FLIGHT
FIGURE 6.—Launching equipment for Damblanc short-distance
postal rocket. This drawing apparently prompted the article
"Big Guns May Speed Mail Rockets" (Popular Science, vol.
128, April 1936, p. 41).—Ed.
1935. My French patent, 803,021, granted on 29
June 1936, protected effectively the following
claims:
1. Radial combustion propagation of the powder
grain with axial space.
2. Complete combustion before separation of each
stage.
3. Separation by fuse ring and stage separation
by explosion.
4. Consumable rocket bodies.
5. Multistage rockets.
6. Use of light metals and alloys for the casings
of rocket stages.
Figure 7 shows a page from my French patent
803,021. The corresponding patent taken out in
the United States, "Self Propelling Projectile,"
United States Patent 2,114,214, dated 12 April 1938,
contains 7 claims and is a literal reproduction of
my French patent. Similar patents were also granted
me in Germany, the United Kingdom, and Japan.
The International Patent Institute, The Hague,
the highest court in this matter, in its consultation
of 22 December 1960, cites as the first in the world
my French patent 803,021 of 29 June 1936, which
covers self-propelled projectiles "of which the propellant
charge is distributed into several superimposed
combustion stages along the longitudinal
axis of the rocket."
12 J2
FIGURE 7.—Three cross-sections of rockets as shown in French
patent 803,021, 29 June 1936.
In addition, on 11 May 1939, I took out French
patent 859,352, covering the replacement of screws
by tapped sleeves in order to assemble two adjacent
components of a multistage rocket.
A preliminary very important trial of my test
stand at the National Office of Research and Inventions
succeeded completely, as may be seen on
the official test report of 30 May 1936, shown in
the appendix.
Another of my French patents that marked an
important advance, 802,422, of 26 February 1936,
concerned the novel design of the rocket test stand
I have described above. The corresponding United
States patent 2,111,315, of 15 March 1938, was entitled
"Force measuring devices for rockets."
My two United States patents were sequestrated
by the Government of the United States during
World War II. After the war, as a result of the
Franco-American Blum-Byrnes agreement, 0 I requested
and obtained in 1965 indemnity for the
use of my patents during that period.
In 1935,1 received from the Societe Astronomique
de France the REP-Hirsch Astronautics prize, an