Early , "Nadar élevant la Photographie à la hauteur de l'Art" (Nadar elevating Photography to Art), published in
Le Boulevard, May 25, 1862 Aerial photography was first practiced by the French photographer and
balloonist Gaspard-Félix Tournachon, known as
"Nadar", in 1858 over
Paris, France. However, the photographs he produced no longer exist and therefore the earliest surviving aerial photograph is titled 'Boston, as the Eagle and the Wild Goose See It.' Taken by
James Wallace Black and
Samuel Archer King on October 13, 1860, it depicts
Boston from a height of 630m. , showing Stonebridge Road,
Stamford Hill, and Seven Sisters Curve, part of the
Tottenham and Hampstead Junction Railway, taken from on 29 May 1882 – the earliest extant aerial photograph taken in the British Isles
Kite aerial photography was pioneered by British meteorologist E.D. Archibald in 1882. He used an explosive charge on a timer to take photographs from the air. The same year,
Cecil Shadbolt devised a method of taking photographs from the basket of a
gas balloon, including shots looking vertically downwards. One of his images, taken from over
Stamford Hill, is the earliest extant aerial photograph taken in the British Isles.
Samuel Franklin Cody developed his advanced 'Man-lifter War Kite' and succeeded in interesting the British
War Office with its capabilities. , using
kite photo technique () In 1908,
Albert Samama Chikly filmed the first ever aerial views using a balloon between
Hammam-Lif and
Grombalia. The first use of a motion picture camera mounted to a heavier-than-air aircraft took place on April 24, 1909, over Rome in the 3:28 silent film short,
Wilbur Wright und seine Flugmaschine.
World War I , photographed from
Eduard Spelterini's balloon on November 21, 1904 The use of aerial photography rapidly matured during the war, as
reconnaissance aircraft were equipped with cameras to record enemy movements and defenses. At the start of the conflict, the usefulness of aerial photography was not fully appreciated, with reconnaissance being accomplished with map sketching from the air. Germany adopted the first aerial camera, a
Görz, in 1913. The French began the war with several squadrons of
Blériot observation aircraft equipped with cameras for reconnaissance. The French Army developed procedures for getting prints into the hands of field commanders in record time.
Frederick Charles Victor Laws started aerial photography experiments in 1912 with No.1 Squadron of the
Royal Flying Corps (later
No. 1 Squadron RAF), taking photographs from the British dirigible
Beta. He discovered that vertical photos taken with a 60% overlap could be used to create a
stereoscopic effect when viewed in a stereoscope, thus creating a perception of depth that could aid in cartography and in intelligence derived from aerial images. The Royal Flying Corps recon pilots began to use cameras for recording their observations in 1914 and by the
Battle of Neuve Chapelle in 1915, the entire system of German trenches was being photographed. In 1916, the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy made vertical camera axis aerial photos above Italy for map-making. The first purpose-built and practical aerial camera was invented by Captain
John Moore-Brabazon in 1915 with the help of the
Thornton-Pickard company, greatly enhancing the efficiency of aerial photography. The camera was inserted into the floor of the aircraft and could be triggered by the pilot at intervals. Moore-Brabazon also pioneered the incorporation of stereoscopic techniques into aerial photography, allowing the height of objects on the landscape to be discerned by comparing photographs taken at different angles. By the end of the war, aerial cameras had dramatically increased in size and
focal power and were used increasingly frequently as they proved their pivotal military worth; by 1918, both sides were photographing the entire front twice a day and had taken over half a million photos since the beginning of the conflict. In January 1918,
General Allenby used five Australian pilots from
No. 1 Squadron AFC to photograph a area in
Palestine as an aid to correcting and improving maps of the Turkish front. This was a pioneering use of aerial photography as an aid for
cartography. Lieutenants
Leonard Taplin,
Allan Runciman Brown, H. L. Fraser,
Edward Patrick Kenny, and L. W. Rogers photographed a block of land stretching from the Turkish front lines deep into their rear areas. Beginning 5 January, they flew with a fighter escort to ward off enemy fighters. Using
Royal Aircraft Factory BE.12 and
Martinsyde airplanes, they not only overcame enemy air attacks, but also had to contend with winds, antiaircraft fire, and malfunctioning equipment to complete their task.
Commercial in 1932, aerial photograph of Fairchild Aerial Surveys Inc The first commercial aerial photography company in the UK was
Aerofilms Ltd, founded by World War I veterans Francis Wills and
Claude Graham White in 1919. The company soon expanded into a business with major contracts in Africa and Asia as well as in the UK. Operations began from the
Stag Lane Aerodrome at Edgware, using the aircraft of the London Flying School. Subsequently, the
Aircraft Manufacturing Company (later the
De Havilland Aircraft Company), hired an
Airco DH.9 along with pilot entrepreneur
Alan Cobham. From 1921, Aerofilms carried out vertical photography for survey and mapping purposes. During the 1930s, the company pioneered the science of
photogrammetry (mapping from aerial photographs), with the
Ordnance Survey amongst the company's clients. In 1920, the Australian
Milton Kent started using a half-plate oblique aero camera purchased from
Carl Zeiss AG in his aerial photographic business. Another successful pioneer of the commercial use of aerial photography was the American
Sherman Fairchild who started with his own aircraft firm
Fairchild Aircraft to develop and build specialized aircraft for high altitude
aerial survey missions. One Fairchild aerial survey aircraft in 1935 carried a unit that combined two synchronized cameras. Utilizing two units of ten lenses each with a ten-inch lens, the aircraft took photos from 23,000 feet. Each photo covered two hundred and twenty-five square miles. One of its first government contracts was an aerial survey of New Mexico to study soil erosion. A year later, Fairchild introduced a better high altitude camera with a nine-lens in one unit that could take a photo covering 600 square miles with each exposure from 30,000 feet.
World War II 's
Lockheed 12A, in which he made a high-speed reconnaissance flight in 1940 In 1939,
Sidney Cotton and
Flying Officer Maurice Longbottom of the
RAF were among the first to suggest that airborne reconnaissance may be a task better suited to fast, small aircraft which would use their speed and high service ceiling to avoid detection and interception. Although this seems obvious now, with modern reconnaissance tasks performed by fast, high flying aircraft, at the time it was radical thinking. They proposed the use of
Spitfires with their armament and
radios removed and replaced with extra fuel and cameras. This led to the development of the
Spitfire PR variants. Spitfires proved to be extremely successful in their reconnaissance role and there were many variants built specifically for that purpose. They served initially with what later became
No. 1 Photographic Reconnaissance Unit (PRU). In 1928, the RAF developed an electric heating system for the aerial camera. This allowed reconnaissance aircraft to take pictures from very high altitudes without the camera parts freezing. Based at
RAF Medmenham, the collection and interpretation of such photographs became a considerable enterprise. Cotton's aerial photographs were far ahead of their time. Together with other members of the 1 PRU, he pioneered the techniques of high-altitude, high-speed
stereoscopic photography that were instrumental in revealing the locations of many crucial military and intelligence targets. According to
R.V. Jones, photographs were used to establish the size and the characteristic launching mechanisms for both the
V-1 flying bomb and the
V-2 rocket. Cotton also worked on ideas such as a prototype specialist reconnaissance aircraft and further refinements of photographic equipment. At the peak, the British flew over 100 reconnaissance flights a day, yielding 50,000 images per day to interpret. Similar efforts were taken by other countries. While stationed on an
aircraft carrier in
Imperial Japan,
FS Hussain, a pilot in the
Royal Indian Air Force, was tasked with photographing the aftermath of the
Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Unaware of the risks of exposure to
radiation, it led to his death in 1969 at the age of 44. ==Uses==