India’s Forgotten Rocket Pioneer: Stephen H Smith - Pigeon Mail to Rocket Mail

The development of rockets in India is commonly understood to have ended with Tipu Sultan in 1799 and started again in 1963 with what is now called the Indian Space Research Organisation. However, in the intervening period, one man built and championed rockets, working alone in Calcutta. In 1925 he set up the Indian Air Mail Society, and it is amongst the global philatelic community where his work is still known but is almost entirely forgotten from the popular imagination in India.

On 14 February 1891, Stephen H Smith, the only son of a tea plantation manager originally from Norfolk, England, was born in the Strawberry Hill region of Shillong. Between 1934 and 1944, he conducted over 200 rocket experiments to demonstrate the utility of a rocket as a means of transport.

Small self-funded groups to develop rockets were established in USSR, USA, Britain, Australia and Germany. From these groups, Sergei Korolev and Wernher von Braun emerged and competed in the epic space race that resulted in Sputnik, Gagarin and Apollo 11. Stephen H Smith was their contemporary but worked alone and unsupported in India.

Long after he had died, he was inducted into the Hall of Fame by the American Airmail Society in 1989. In 1992, a year after the centenary of his birth, the Indian government celebrated his achievements by issuing a stamp and a first-day cover dedicated to his work. Today his work is found in official NASA publications, the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society and the National Air and Space Museum.

This new study of his contacts with the King of Sikkim, King George V, with a member of parliament in London and a 25-year-long correspondence with a Swiss philatelist reveals in his own words his struggle to attain recognition and support for his work. His reluctant attempt to work with the military authorities in India during World War II ended in frustration. His multiple attempts in 1949 to contact the Governor of Bengal and Prime Minister Nehru in the newly independent India failed to generate a response.