How it began
Conrad Haas (1509 to 1576) was a military engineer born at Dornbach near Vienna who served the Habsburg emperor Ferdinand I. He came to Transylvania in 1551 and became arsenal master at Hermannstadt, now Sibiu in Romania. European Digital Treasures states that he began his treatise on rocket technology in 1529, before the move, and the manuscript is dated 1529 to 1569. It is written in German and held in the State Archives of Sibiu. The designs were therefore written down partly before and partly during his years in Sibiu.
Before it existed
Before the manuscript came to light, the first description of a three-stage rocket was credited to Casimir Siemienowicz of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, in his 1650 work Artis Magnae Artilleriae Pars Prima. The German fireworks maker Johann Schmidlap is believed to have experimented with staging in 1590, using what he called step rockets.
How it works
The treatise combines fireworks and weapons technology. Across 282 pages it presents 17 types of rockets with calculations, descriptions and color illustrations. It sets out the motion of multistage rockets, in which stages fire in turn, and includes a three-stage rocket and a manned rocket. It discusses different fuel mixtures, including liquid fuel, and introduces delta-shaped fins and bell-shaped nozzles.
Where it stands today
The manuscript was unknown until it was found in the Sibiu archives in 1961, under the shelf mark Varia II 374. Doru Todericiu published studies of it from 1967 and a book in 1969. It is bound with two other manuscripts on fireworks and military techniques and has been shown in the European Digital Treasures project of European archives. Haas ended his chapter on the military use of rockets with advice against using them: more peace and no war, leaving the rifles calmly in storage, so that the prince keeps his money and the arsenal master his life.
