Rocket PoweR, InteRstellaR tRavel and eteRnal lIfe

Chapter Seven
TO THE STARS BY “ELECTRO-MAGNETIC SPACE DRIVE”
The Elmira Advertiser for July 11, 1932, reported that
Daniel Hungerford was planning an “attempt to send
a shaft of light to the moon” during a total eclipse of
the sun on August 31. “Mr. Hungerford hopes that the
shaft was [sic – will be?] reflected to some point north
of here with sufficient strength that it may be seen with
a powerful telescope. If this is done it will mean that
he has established means of communication for which
science has long sought but never achieved.” The
Associated Gas and Electric Company was to be asked
to provide a searchlight “of sufficient strength to
throw a beam so far a distance.” But the article pointed
out that the “Lindbergh beacon at Chicago”, supposedly
the world’s most powerful searchlight, “can
throw a light only 21 miles.” Unfavorable weather
conditions in themselves likely prevented Hungerford
from shining a light on the moon. In any case, the
Elmira newspapers had no report in subsequent days
about the experiment.
An Elmira Sunday Telegram article from March 1963
featured a photograph of Hungerford with Cressy A.
Mowrey looking at the solar eclipse of August 30, 1932
from the Elmira College observatory. 190 A report from
the September 1, 1932 edition of the Star-Gazette,
where a similar photograph was printed, explained
that the 94 percent eclipse of the sun by the moon was
observed through an image thrown upon a piece of
cardboard. Hungerford demonstrated a knowledge of
astronomy in explaining the irregular outline of the
moon as “the shadows of mountains of the lunar orb.
In a total eclipse the sun’s corona, shining through
their valleys, give the beautiful phenomenon known
as Bailey’ Beads. The corona is not visible except in
total eclipse, Mr. Hungerford said.”
Hungerford’s interest in astronomy reportedly
dated from 1909, when he had his “first telescope view
of outer space. The planet Saturn and her rings so
impressed him he reproduced experimentally the
globe and rings for his scientific lectures.” As early as
1936, Hungerford was reported “constructing models
of the planet Saturn to be used in schools and observatories.
. . ” 191
SPACE TRAVEL
Following the success of their rocket car, the
Hungerfords hoped to power themselves off the earth.
A proposed flying version of the Shirley Lois “The
Moon Girl” was drawn by sign painter Robert N.
Hopkins, Daniel’s erstwhile brother-in-law. 192 Shirley
Hyde recalled:
[T]he hullabaloo when a sepia section of a New
York City paper . . . ran a Sunday section on the
rocket car. The article stated that Dan expected to
go to the moon by a certain date, taking me with
him. I must have been a first grader at Hendy
Avenue School in Elmira at the time this was published,
and I remember the taunting I took about
my ‘crackpot’ father, and I was TERRIFIED then
that he’d actually take me to the moon and I’d have
leave my mother and maternal grandmother. By
that time, my mother and dad had separated. I
don’t know whatever happened to that paper. 193
In 1936 Hungerford contemplated leaving politics to
“carry on experimental work.” He was quoted as saying,
“There are practically no inventions at present suited
to explore the universe. I see man’s destiny as involving
the conquest of space and the occupation of the
stars. Invention along this line is unlimited.” And as a
“solution to the death rate”, he said, “we will call on science
to raise the Bertillion measurements of a man to
the nth degree – to the point where a man blown to bits
by an explosion might be recreated from the measurement
of himself on file.” 194
Cliff Towner wrote that just before he enlisted in the
army in 1945, “Dan showed me plans and diagrams of
his ‘Dream Ship,’ a three-stage rocket ship that would
take a man to ‘the Moon and beyond’ as Dan put it.” 195
The German magazine Der Stern, in a 1958 article
about Robert H. Goddard’s experiments with liquidfuel
rockets, published photos of Daniel and Floyd with
a liquid-fuel rocket motor, the Hungerford rocket car,
and the artist’s conception of the Hungerford rocket
ship. The text accompanying the images said in his
Daniel and Floyd Hungerford: Rocket Power, Interstellar Travel and Eternal Life, by Geofrey N. Stein. New York State Museum Record 4, © 2013 by The
University of the State of New York, The State Education Department, Albany, New York. All rights reserved.
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