VI 

 WAR-TIME PHOTOGRAPHY 



HERBERT E. IVES 



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BEFORE the great war, photography had figured but 

 little as a military aid. It was used principally for making 

 records ; pictures of men and equipment, camps and battlefields, 

 as in the famous Brady photographs of our Civil War. In 

 quite recent wars some actual views of battles while in progress 

 have been produced, with men and artillery in action. These 

 were made possible by the practical development of instantane- 

 ous photography, and were due to the enterprize of the news- 

 paper photographer catering to a public accustomed to get its 

 news as much through photographs as through headlines. But 

 the use of photography as an essential to the preparation as 

 well as to the carrying out of military tactics is a development 

 of the last war, as peculiar to it as is the development of the 

 airplane. It is in fact in the airplane that the photographic 

 camera has developed from a mere recorder of minor aspects of 

 battles already lost or won, into the chief guide to their fighting 

 and a really important military weapon. Any account of war- 

 time photography must therefore be devoted largely to this 

 newest form, photography from the air. 



But we must not infer, because airplane photography 

 has completely outdistanced all other kinds in military applica- 

 tion, that the services of the less novel forms of photography 

 have been small. On the contrary, the use of photography for 

 securing records, for instruction, and in apparatus for the most 

 diverse purposes for instance in the sound-ranging of big 

 guns has been on a scale that would have warranted remark 



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