Sir William Congreve, 2nd Baronet, English inventor and politician, developed Congreve rockets (died 1828)

Sir William Congreve, 2nd Baronet KCH FRS was a British Army officer, Tory politician, publisher and inventor. A pioneer in the field of rocket artillery, he was renowned for his development and use of Congreve rockets during the Napoleonic Wars.

The Congreve rocket was a type of rocket artillery designed by British inventor Sir William Congreve in 1808. The design was based upon the rockets deployed by the Kingdom of Mysore against the East India Company during the Second, Third, and Fourth Anglo-Mysore Wars. Lieutenant general Thomas Desaguliers, colonel commandant of the Royal Artillery at Woolwich, was impressed by reports of their effectiveness, and undertook several unsuccessful experiments to produce his own rocket weapons. Several captured Mysorean rockets were sent to Great Britain following the annexation of the Mysorean kingdom into British India following the death of Tipu Sultan in the siege of Seringapatam.