On June 8 , 1959 , a large Regulus I atomic missile pointed directly at America ’s shoreline . The missile was perch on a submarine footle about 100 miles off the Florida sea-coast . Just before noon , it blasted into the clouds , traveling more than 100 miles in just 22 minutes , and landed squarely on its target , the Naval Auxiliary Air Station in Jacksonville , Fla.—successfully delivering 3000 pieces of mail .
For as long as the great unwashed have been sealing gasbag , they ’ve been finding ways to get messages to their destination quicker . During the late 1800s , ring mail balloons and gliders vie with attack aircraft carrier pigeons for airspace . When airplanes pounce in , people were still unsatisfied with the wait . By the 1930s , inventors were toy with something even quicker : rockets .
The approximation was n’t new . scientist had been mulling “ mortar mail ” since 1810 , with mixed results . In the 19th century , multitude on the island of Tonga used military rockets to nail mail over the Witwatersrand to Samoa . ( Most crashed into the ocean . ) After World War I , German and Austrian scientist resurrected the musical theme . In 1931 , an inexpert rocketeer named Friedrich Schmiedl successfully launched 102 letters across a mountain in the Alps . Shortly after , businessman Gerhard Zucker pitched the idea to the U.K. governing . He exhibited the technology by stuffing more than 1,200 envelopes into two rockets and kindle them over some Scots islet . They exploded .
The United States did n’t take rocket mail seriously until the Cold War . By then , the volume of ring mail had spiked more than 30 percentage and Arthur Summerfield , the postmaster general , was do-or-die to deal with the glut . So in 1959 , official hosted an experimentation : They transform the USSBarbero , a nuclear bomber , into a floating post business office . They removed the nuclear payload on a Regulus I cruise missile , replaced it with two postal postal service container , and blast it to Florida . It stuck a consummate landing place .
Summerfield gleefully declared , “ Before humankind reaches the moon , mail will be delivered within hours from New York to California , to Britain , to India , or Australia by manoeuvre missile . We stand on the verge of rocket mail . ” He neglected the fact that postal workers needed time to sort and route the mail . Plus , it was the 1950s . Americans were n’t passing excited to see rockets zooming over their backyards . The government eventually got the memo .
