| WHAT IS PROPULSION? | ||
One of the first devices to deliberately employ rocket propulsion was designed by a Greek named Archytas around the year 400 B.C. Archytas mystified and amused his fellow citizens by flying a pigeon made of wood. Escaping steam propelled the bird suspended on wires. The pigeon used the action-reaction principle, a concept not stated as a scientific law until the 17th century. About three hundred years after Archytas, another Greek, Hero of Alexandria, invented a similar rocket-like device called an aeolipile. It, too, used steam as a propulsive gas. |
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