AERIAL PHOTOGRAPHY 



By Capt. H. K. Baislet 

 United States Army Air Corps 



[With 13 plates] 



It is not uncommon to hear a person returning from his first air- 

 plane flight remark on how small the fields and towns appeared, or 

 that the earth looked like a carpet when seen from the air. It is a 

 conception of the earth as we know it should be, but one which we 

 have difficulty in getting as we travel about on the ground. It is 

 only natural that the men who pioneered in aviation were impressed 

 by the view obtained while in flight and that they should attempt, 

 by means of photography, to record that view. 



EARLY AERIAL PHOTOGRAPHY 



In 1861, 42 years before the heavier-than-air flight of the Wright 

 brothers, an oblique aerial photograph of Boston was made by King 

 and Black from a captive balloon at an altitude of about 1,200 feet, 

 and other aerial photographs were made later that day by these same 

 two men as their balloon drifted in a southeasterly direction from 

 Boston. Although considerable information was obtained from this 

 and other photographic balloon flights, the development of aerial 

 photography was slow and its sphere limited to the taking of chance 

 shots until the development of the airplane. 



Early work in the development of heavier-than-air craft was en- 

 tirely an effort to imitate the flight of birds by the mechanical flap- 

 ping of wings. Attempts at soaring flight came later with the gliding 

 flights of Sir George Cay ley (about 1810) and later by Lilienthal, 

 Chanute, Montgomery, and others, and promise of airplanes of man- 

 carrying ability was shown in the one-fourth size engine-driven 

 model aerodrome flown successfully over the Potomac by Samuel 

 Bierpont Langley in 1896. 



The successful flights by the Wright brothers in 1903, followed 

 shortly by other flights in this country and abroad, led to the rapid 

 development of airplanes capable of carrying passengers and equip- 

 ment. By 1911 several airplane photographs had been made, one at 

 College Park, Md. (pi. 1), near Washington, and one of a fire at 



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