Made In India - Season 1

The first rockets to be used as weapons were fire arrows in China, then Korea, and then by the Mongols of Genghis Khan. However, the effect of fire arrows was more psychologically than physically destructive. However, in the mid 1700s, in the kingdom of Mysore, the valiant fighter and the Tiger of Mysore, Tipu Sultan along with his father Haidar Ali developed a new kind of weapon. Unlike earlier rockets they built theirs out of iron –making a hollow tube into which an explosive was placed. These new rockets were not only far more dangerous and could cause great damage to anything they struck, but also had an effective range of over 2 kilometres. Tipu Sultan used these effectively against the British forces, wreaking great havoc among the British armies, before he was ultimately defeated. However, those rockets of Tipus became the blueprint for the Congreve rocket, which the British used to defeat Napoleon, and were the forerunners of all rocket artillery. And today the rockets have not only taken the shape of missiles , they also are the technology behind satellites. Tipus Rocket has come a long way