At the beginning of the 19th century, the telegraph was in its infancy, but for all the advantages it promised, its fierce immediacy and even more angry aura of modernity, there was something about it that the poet Heinrich von Kleist did not quite like. This new invention did not allow rolling. The good man of letters, essentially romantic, loved long letters; and if anything could be predicted in the young telegraph, he would not be too fond of nuances, subtleties and letters XXL.

Literally, what happened when she wanted to loosen her ponytail? For example, if you need to send a package? In both cases, should it abandon modernity and use the old postal system with railcar and postal service? Why does a bourgeois’s message travel on the impulse of electricity, and a poet must be content with that of a horse?

No, thought von Kleist. There was another option: gunpowder.

Don’t say missile, don’t say missile

Portrait of Heinrich von Kleist.

If the telegram format is not applicable to letters Young Werther’s ProblemsWhy don’t you apply for the shoot? Why not take them great distances? a clean ball shot?

By the autumn of 1810, with clear ideas—just ideas, yes—Heinrich von Kleist did what he did best: he took paper, pencil, and wrote. Entwurf einer Bombenpostan article published in a newspaper Berlin’s Abendlatter He suggested the advantages of sending messages with artillery.

His proposal consisted of keeping “letters, reports, attachments and packages”. in howitzer and then shoot with a cannon. Bullets would be launched from special points, which were buffer zones from which they could be received, transferred to other weapons and continued in a chain of fire.

According to von Kleit’s calculations, thanks to this method, a chart – yes, even very, very, very long ones – would be perfectly matched with less than a horse, the 120 kilometers separating Berlin and Szczecin, and even the 290 very far from Breslau. can cover. -He was buying a towed carriage.

The proposal was little more than that, an interesting article for history. In fact, despite the calculations he made and the details he provided, von Klei’s at the time of writing, sarcasm. Be that as it may or not, what is undeniable is that the poet is remembered today for his genius with the pen, as well as for his pioneering status of “rocket mail”, an idea adopted by others after him. He came to experience his golden moments. Its purpose: to use bullets to cover great distances in a short time.

Perhaps not to send tearful letters to the taste of 19th century German Romanticism about the tragic human condition; however rocket mail of course there is a curious chronicle.

The cannon mail was difficult, even dangerous, and Vernian was not without a point; but it also offered important virtues beyond freeing writers from the practice of stylistic synthesis imposed by the telegraph. If bullets and cannonballs have anything, it’s what they are. designed to overcome obstacles. This advantage led to a request for a “rocket mail” patent at the end of 1870, during the Prussian siege of Paris. And that same advantage is what allowed the system to enjoy perhaps its best performance.

Of course, far from France and Germany, thousands of kilometers from Europe, in the South Pacific.

There, in Tonga, they thought it was a great idea to solve one of the biggest problems with rocket mail: how to get the mail to Niufao’ou, a remote island surrounded by reefs, necessitated special care when approaching ships. shores. Navigating the volcanic island was so complex that mail ships were devoted to staying on the high seas for years and dropping metal suitcases with correspondence. To get them to the island, they had to be reached and dragged with a clean hit.

Collect model rockets from 1814 on a plate.

Forget about tracking reefs, tides, storms, and even sharks, which more or less work; but in the 20th century, someone came up with an idea too much along von Kleist’s lines: why not launch maps from Congreve rockets, fireworks-like projectiles, and ships with various specs? more than three kilometers?

No sooner said than done. In practice, this was far from a panacea: some changed direction, others exploded, fell into the water…but German physicist and engineer Hermann Oberth wrote another chapter in a chronicle that would continue years later in the 1920s.

Even when using the right devices equipped with secondary thrusters and capable of going to high altitudes, Oberth says, rocket mail can take 20 kilos to more than a thousand kilometers Get away and ship transatlantic deliveries in just half an hour. With a similar philosophy, Friedrich Schmiedl has even developed rockets that fly successfully in the Austrian Alps, though focusing on short range.

It goes without saying that not everyone shares Hermann Oberth’s or Friedrich Schimiedl’s enthusiasm for letter rockets. In 1929, when a journalist asked the German ambassador what he thought of the idea, the diplomat resorted to all his courtesy and a wisp of humor: he assured that if it was the first time that Oberth’s proposal was shown to be unrepresentative, it would not be a problem. Any danger to “the life, limb, or property of American citizens.”

If there’s an appropriate name next to von Kleist in the history of “postman bullets”, it’s another German, Gerhard Zucker. And not exactly because of his achievements at the company. During the 1930s, Zucker embarked on a personal crusade. dotted with several failures and his occasional success (when he reached 34) to demonstrate the virtues of service, he launched a rocket loaded with fake cards from Sussex Downs to the south coast of England with relative success.

In any case, his balance was so bad that in Great Britain, where his promises resonated, they eventually called him a charlatan and a threat to public safety, and invited him to pack his bags and return to Germany. Whether it’s true or not, the truth is that if Zucker and others like him were able to fund their experiments, it was largely thanks to the support of philatelists who were interested in demo cards and commemorative stamps.

HMS Anchorite submarine Regulus missile in an early 1960s image.

That old romantic dream of distributing letters with cannon fire or rockets would still write a few more chapters with the same number of protagonists, but by the late 1930s it had lost its grip in its early years. Interestingly, he succeeded just then. one of his biggest milestonesIt would show that the pioneers were not misguided in their shots – jokingly – and that everything was ultimately limited to a matter of logistics and vehicles.

In a very Cold War-style demonstration, in 1959 the United States fired a Regulus I cruise missile loaded with letters from the submarine USS Barbero, which managed to land at a naval station more than 1,100 kilometers away at Mayport 22 minutes later. , fla. Testing with a model like the one seen on the cover of this article was a veritable bombshell, prompting the US Postal Service to dream of a future in the purest von Kleist fashion.

— Before humans reach the moon, the mail will be delivered by guided missiles from New York to California, England, India or Australia in a few hours. We are on the verge of rocket mail. — The postmaster at that time declared the general.

it didn’t go well with guess. His guess was as accurate as many of the mail rockets launched in Tongan waters or Zucker’s hapless missiles.

By the second half of the 20th century, airmail was already operating in many parts of the world, with airplanes making it possible to quickly transport letters from one point of the world to another, even across oceans, and frankly, launch rockets into the middle of the world. The Cold War also had a risk.

Heinrich von Kleist’s old proposal had gone from being a brilliant idea for sending large letters to being the subject of great chronicles.

Pictures | Wikipedia (1 and 2) and NavSource