Goddard, Robert Hutchings

A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes. Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, vol. 71, number 2 [along with 5 other numbers constituting volume 71]. Washington: Smithsonian, 1919



8vo (9 x 5¾ in.; 228 x 146 mm). Printed self-wrapper, 10 pages of photographs on 5 leaves; some marginal thumbing and soiling, a few annotations in pencil. Dark-green buckram, gold-stamped title label on spine.

New York University Library, University Heights (bookplate stamped "withdrawn," stamped exlibris on volume title)

Honeyman sale 1521; see Braun & Ordway, History of Rocketry (1967), pp. 43-56

First edition of Goddard's seminal work on the mathematics of rocket propulsion.

The first separate publication on rocketry by the Father of Modern Rocketry, and the most famous of Goddard's works. The paper presents the fundamentals of rocketry including the epochal section at the end "Calculation of Minimum Mass Required to Raise One Pound to an 'Infinite' Altitude," referring to space flight and the possibility of using rockets as instrument carriers for the exploration of the upper atmosphere.