WILLY LEY - COMMEMORATIVE ENVELOPE SIGNED CIRCA 1936 - HFSID 18080

WILLY LEY
Commemorative postcard carried on the first mail delivery rocket flight (1936). Ley, only recently arrived in the US from Germany, helped design this rocket, which is pictured on the card.
Commemorative Envelope signed: "Willy Ley", 5½x3½. Sepia picture postcard showing the rocket which carried mail from Greenwood Lake, New York to Hewitt, New Jersey on February 9, 1936. This postcard was carried on that flight, and bears an ink stamp cachet and special postmark! The flight only traveled a distance of 300 meters across the lake, but it was a first!The postcard was then sent by regular mail with a Hewett, New Jersey postmark of February 23, 1936, to a typed address in Springfield, Massachusetts.Scientist and space advocate Willy Ley (1906-1969) was a founding member of the German Spaceflight Society, publishing his own book, Travel in Outer Space (1926). With Herman Oberth, he was a technical advisor on Fritz Lang's silent film The Woman in the Moon (1928). Leaving Nazi Germany in 1935, he moved to Britain and then the US, where he continued his advocacy of rocketry and spaceflight. He published nonfiction articles in leading science fiction magazines, and wrote several books (one co-authored with Werner von Braun). In 1944, he outlined plans for a 3-stage rocket designed to reach the moon. His Rockets, Missiles and Space Exploration, published the year of the Soviet Sputnik satellite, influenced members of Congress. Adhesive residue near bottom left corner. Fine condition.