Conrad Haas

Who was Conrad Haas?

Conrad Haas was a military engineer for the Kingdom of Hungary and Principality of Transilvania, who is often cited as the first person to describe a multistage rocket in writing, although some historians attribute that distinction to Jiao Yu in 14th Century China.

Haas was perhaps born in Dornbach. As the Zeugwart and arsenal master of the Imperial Austrian army under Ferdinand I. Stephen Báthory, the grand prince of Transylvania invited Haas to Hermannstadt, Siebenbürgen in 1551, where he was the engineer of the weaponry and also he started to teach at Klausenburg.

Between 1529 and 1556, he wrote a book in German language in which he described rocket technology, involving the combination of fireworks and weapons technologies. This manuscript was discovered in 1961, in the Sibiu public records.

In this work Haas dealt with the technical details of rocket construction, explaining the working principles of a rocket. He described many rocket types, including the multi-stage rocket, bundled rockets, and the idea of modern spacecraft.