Hermann Ganswindt

Hermann Ganswindt, 1856–1934, born in Voigtshof bei Seeburg, Germany (today Wójtówko, Poland)

An eccentric inventor, Ganswindt in 1891 proposed a space vehicle propelled by exploding charges. He understood Newton’s Third Law but did not equate his propulsion system with a rocket. He was perhaps the earliest person to propose a feasible means of spaceflight in print, but he was largely forgotten until German rocket enthusiasts rediscovered him in the 1920s.