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 for mail, medicine, food items and living creatures.
In 1925 he set up the Indian Air Mail Society through which he established a network of global connections. It is amongst the global philatelic community where his work is best recorded and almost entirely forgotten from the popular imagination in India. 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, rockets were built in India and championed by Stephen Smith working alone primarily in and around Kolkata for....
