Popular Science Monthly 



by elastic bands that pass over the back. 

 The shutter opens automatically at pre- 

 arranged intervals and the roll of film, 

 which moves in unison with the shutter, 

 can take thirty photographs one and a 

 half inches square. This allows an al- 

 most continuous registry of the principal 

 points of view during a flight of six 

 miles. One of the engravings shows 

 a view taken in flight by the pigeon 

 photographer. The general staff of the 

 German army heard of Dr. Neubron- 

 ner's ingenious device and investigated 



Photograph made automatically by a 

 carrier pigeon in its flight 



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JP^S^^dSil 





31 



its adaptability for topographic recon- 

 naissance. The method was evidently 

 found satisfactory, for since the present 

 war broke out many pigeon photogra- 

 phers have been found back of the Allied 

 lines either killed or stunned by the ex- 

 plosion of shells and firing of machine 

 gmis. 



The history of carrier pigeons in war 

 goes back to the earliest times. Pliny 

 tells us that Decimus Brutus, one of the 

 assassins of Caesar, used pigeons, when 

 besieged by Antony at what is now Mo- 

 dena, to communicate with the Consul 

 Hirtius who was coming to his aid. The 

 crusaders are known to have used them 

 at the siege of Hasar-near Aleppo, and 

 the medieval Sultan Noureddin of 

 Egypt is said to have established a pig- 

 eon-post with relays of pigeons. Among 

 the noted instances of their use in mod- 

 ern times is the story that the London 

 Rothschild knew of the defeat of Napo- 

 leon at Waterloo, by means of carrier- 

 pigeons, ahead of the English govern- 

 ment, to his great financial benefit on the 

 Exchange. But then, this is only one 

 of a dozen stories of the origin of the 

 Rothschild fortune. 



Releasing a carrier pigeon from its basket on its photographic journey 



