"What is amateur rocketry? Is it the kid who mixes deadly explosives in the cellar corner? The teen-ager who blasts off a high-velocity missile without regard for people or property? A Professor Goddard, the rocketry pioneer, who experimented when the only reward was ridicule?" And so goes the opening paragraph in this August, 1958 article from Model Airplane News. The article was written at a time when the world was discovering rocketry on a widescale basis by the launch of the Soviet Sputnik satellite.

The article covers the birth of hobby rocketry, when the majority of components used to construct these amateur birds were not designed for that purpose. Suprisingly, the hobby survived its infancy and went on to flourish, thanks to the widespread availability of safe commercially manufactured hobby rocketry components.

The article has been captured and converted to Adobe PDF format to share with the readers. Six pages in length, the article is 765K in size. To view the article, click here. You will need Adobe Reader to view the article. If you do not have Adobe Reader, a copy may be downloaded for free from the Adobe website at http://www.adobe.com/.

Part of the challenge we face in the hobby is the archival and preservation of these old sources of information on our hobby. Adobe PDF format makes a great medium for the collection and storage of these types of documents because of its portability and cross-platform approach.

We would like to extend our thanks to Sean Lannan for sharing this document with the readers. If you have an article you would like to share with the readers, send email to This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it  with details on the article you have to share. Previous submissions have consisted of submitting the magazine in whole, which were be returned upon completion of the scanning process.