William Congreve (inventor)

Sir William Congreve, 2nd Baronet

Model types of the missile weapons developed by Congreve

Sir William Congreve, 2nd Baronet (* 20th May 1772 in Kent , †  15. May 1828 in Toulouse ) was a British officer of the artillery and engineer . Congreve became famous for the rockets named after him , the Congreve rockets .

Life

William Congreve was born the son of the artillery general Sir William Congreve, 1st Baronet and in 1814 inherited his title of Baronet , of Walton in the County of Stafford .

He made a name for himself through several inventions in the construction of locks and canals, as well as through the new facilities of the British army led by the Duke of York . He was therefore appointed overseer of the royal laboratory.

His most important invention was a kind of incendiary missile . With this type he made his first major experiments in 1804. In 1806 they were used at Boulogne , in 1807 in the bombardment of Copenhagen , in 1809 in the attack on the French fleet at Île d'Aix and in the bombardment of Vlissingen and in 1813/1814 off Glückstadt. The British then sent their allies rocket batteries during the Wars of Liberation , which were used in 1813 in the sieges of Wittenberg and Danzig and in the Battle of Leipzig .

Congreve's missiles were also used in the war of 1812 against the Americans. During the bombardment of Baltimore in September 1814, the rockets launched by the British inspired the American Francis Scott Key to write a line (... and the rockets red glare ...) for his song The Star-Spangled Banner , which later became the American national anthem.

Another invention of Congreve concerned color printing , which he tried to improve so much that one could print several colors at the same time (see Congreve printing ). In 1808 he patented his Congreve ball clock . A ball runs on a zigzag line milled into a brass plate.

In 1812 he was first elected as a member of the House of Commons . As Tory , he was a member of Parliament until his death.

In 1816 and 1817 he accompanied the then Russian Grand Duke Nicholas on his travels through Great Britain. Then in 1824 he headed the Imperial-Continental-Gas-Association (ICGA), a company for the introduction of gas lighting on the European continent. Here he was brought into financial difficulties so that he went to Toulouse in 1828, where he died on May 15th.

The moon crater Congreve is named after him.

Works

• Elementary treatise on the mounting of naval order . London 1812.
• Description of the hydro-pneumatic lock . London 1815.
• A treatise on the general principles, powers and facility of application of the Congreve rocket system, as compared with artillery . London 1827; German: Weimar 1829.

literature

• James Earle: Commodore Squib. The Life, Times and Secretive Wars of England's first Rocket Man, Sir William Congreve, 1772-1828 . Cambridge Scholars, Newcastle 2010, ISBN 978-1-4438-1770-7 .
• Frank H. Winter: The First Golden Age of Rocketry. Congreve and Hale Rockets of the Nineteenth Century . Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington DC 1990, ISBN 0-87474-987-5 .

Web links

• Article by / about William Congreve in the Polytechnic Journal
• Replica of Congrev rockets - website of a re-enactment club that deals with Congrev rockets
• Mr William Congreve at Hansard (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Rocketeers in front of Leipzig . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung from July 14, 2013, page 50
2. ↑ ICGA ( Memento of February 26, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 1.8 MB)

predecessor	title	successor
William Congreve	Baronet, of Walton 1814-1828	William Congreve