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Speaker 1: This Day in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 1: Hello and Welcome to This Day in History Class, a

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Speaker 1: show that delivers a snapshot of history every day of

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Speaker 1: the week. I'm Gaybelueesier, and in this episode, we're looking

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Speaker 1: at the dawn of aerial photography and the painstaking efforts

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Speaker 1: it took to capture a bird's eye view. The day

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Speaker 1: was October thirteenth, eighteen sixty. James Wallace Black took a

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Speaker 1: photo of Boston from a hot air balloon twelve hundred

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Speaker 1: feet in the air. Because of the limitations of wet

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Speaker 1: plate photography, he also had to expose and develop the

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Speaker 1: glass plate negative while still aloft, using a makeshift dark

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Speaker 1: room set up in the basket. The resulting image was

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Speaker 1: the first aerial photo taken in the United States, the

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Speaker 1: first aerial photo of a city anywhere in the world,

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Speaker 1: and the oldest aerial photo known to still exist today.

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Speaker 1: Prior to the mid nineteenth century, only a handful of

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Speaker 1: intrepid adventurers had access to true aerial views. While some

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Speaker 1: painters and sketch artists had created imagined views of what

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Speaker 1: cities might look like from above, few had dared to

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Speaker 1: take to the sky in a hot air balloon to

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Speaker 1: confirm their theories. The advent of photography offered a new

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Speaker 1: means of capturing a bird's eye view of the world,

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Speaker 1: but even then, the finicky process required the photographic plate

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Speaker 1: to be developed within twenty minutes, hardly enough time to

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Speaker 1: land a balloon and race to the nearest dark room. Finally, though,

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Speaker 1: in eighteen fifty eight, an innovative French photographer pulled off

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Speaker 1: the feet by loading a dark room and all its

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Speaker 1: equipment into the basket of a balloon. His name was

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Speaker 1: Gaspar Phelipe's Tornishm, but he was better known by his

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Speaker 1: pseudonym Felique's Nadar. The photo he managed to produce of

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Speaker 1: the French countryside has sadly been lost to time. But

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Speaker 1: just two years after Nadar's historic flight, a photographer and

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Speaker 1: portraitist named James Wallace Black was able to repeat the achievement.

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Speaker 1: In Boston, Massachusetts. On October thirteenth, eighteen sixty, Black rode

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Speaker 1: into the sky aboard the Queen of the Air, a

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Speaker 1: hot air balloon belonging to navigator Samuel Archer King. The

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Speaker 1: balloon was tethered at the Boston Common Public Park and

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Speaker 1: from his vantage point twelve hundred feet above the city,

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Speaker 1: Black made eight exposures on wet colodeon plates. The movement

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Speaker 1: of the balloon wound up spoiling seven of the plates,

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Speaker 1: but one image was successful, a sweeping view of the

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Speaker 1: city and harbor from a perspective that had never before

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Speaker 1: been seen. Black's photograph soon appeared in the Boston Herald,

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Speaker 1: where it caught the attention of Harvard professor and poet

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Speaker 1: Oliver Wendell Holmes, writing for the Atlantic Monthly. Holmes marveled

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Speaker 1: at the new view of his city and unintentionally gave

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Speaker 1: the photo its title, Boston as the Eagle and the

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Speaker 1: Wild Goose See it. Here's what he wrote. We believe

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Speaker 1: this attempt of our younger townsmen to be the earliest

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Speaker 1: in which the aeronaut has sought to work the two

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Speaker 1: miracles at once of rising against the force of gravity

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Speaker 1: and picturing the face of the earth beneath him without

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Speaker 1: brush or pencil. One of their photographs is lying before us,

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Speaker 1: Boston as the Eagle and wild Goose. See it is

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Speaker 1: a very different object from the same place, as the

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Speaker 1: solid citizen looks up at its eaves and chimneys, the

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Speaker 1: Old South and Trinity Church are two landmarks not to

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Speaker 1: be mistaken. Washington Street slants across the picture as a

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Speaker 1: narrow cleft. Milk Street winds as if the old cow

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Speaker 1: path which gave it a name had been followed by

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Speaker 1: the builders of its commercial palaces. Windows, chimneys and skylights

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Speaker 1: attract the eye, and the central parts of the view

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Speaker 1: exquisitely defined, bewildering in numbers. Towards the circumference, it grows darker,

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Speaker 1: becoming clouded and confused, and at one end, a black

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Speaker 1: expanse of waveless water is whitened by the nebulous outline

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Speaker 1: of fitting sales. As a first attempt, it is, on

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Speaker 1: the whole a remarkable success, but its greatest interest is

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Speaker 1: in showing what we may hope to see accomplished in

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Speaker 1: the same direction. Ernest though it was, Holmes's praise was

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Speaker 1: off on one count. As I mentioned before, Black's aerial

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Speaker 1: photo was not the first one ever taken. That credit

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Speaker 1: belongs to Phelipe's Nadar. But the photo of Boston still

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Speaker 1: carries its own historical importance apart from being the oldest

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Speaker 1: surviving aerial photo, because it captures a record of the

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Speaker 1: city as it looked in eighteen sixty before much of

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Speaker 1: it was destroyed in the Great Fire of eighteen seven two.

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Speaker 1: As the first such photo taken in the United States,

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Speaker 1: it also caught the eye of the U. S. Army,

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Speaker 1: which immediately saw the military value of an aerial vantage point.

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Speaker 1: When the Civil War erupted the following year, President Lincoln

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Speaker 1: was quick to commission a Union Army Balloon Corps for

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Speaker 1: the purpose of aerial reconnaissance, and while there are claims

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Speaker 1: that photographs were taken from balloons to track the movements

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Speaker 1: of Confederate troops below, none of those photos are known

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Speaker 1: to survive today. In the eighteen seventies, the introduction of

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Speaker 1: the dry plate process made aerial photography much easier, as

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Speaker 1: it was no longer necessary to develop the photos in

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Speaker 1: mid air. This allowed for experimentation with all sorts of

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Speaker 1: gravity defying objects, including untethered balloons, as well as kites, pigeons,

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Speaker 1: and eventually airplanes. As a military tool, aerial photography hit

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Speaker 1: its stride during World War I, when cameras mounted to

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Speaker 1: aircraft were used to record enemy movement and defenses. The

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Speaker 1: effectiveness of this reconnaissance fueled the further development of both

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Speaker 1: photographic and aerospace technologies during the twentieth century, making it

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Speaker 1: increasingly easy to take clear, detailed photos while airborne. Today,

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Speaker 1: thanks to drone photography, satellite imagery, and the Internet, we

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Speaker 1: can easily access aerial views of just about anywhere on Earth,

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Speaker 1: as well as quite a few places beyond it. You

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Speaker 1: might think that would diminish our desire to see the

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Speaker 1: world from above, and to be sure, the view has

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Speaker 1: lost some of its novel appeal, but most of us

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Speaker 1: still can't help but snap a picture from the window

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Speaker 1: of an airplane or stare in awe at the span

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Speaker 1: of a city skyline. There's a unique sense of scale

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Speaker 1: and place that comes from that sky high perspective. It

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Speaker 1: gives us a sense of our true size and relation

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Speaker 1: to the world we share, providing a much needed dose

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Speaker 1: of beauty, wonder, and, if we're lucky, humility. I'm Gabe

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Speaker 1: Lucier and hopefully you now know a little more about

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Speaker 1: history today than you did yesterday. You can learn even

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Speaker 1: more about history by following us on Twitter, Facebook, and

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Speaker 1: Instagram at TDI HC Show, and if you have any

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Speaker 1: feedback you'd like to share, you can always send it

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Speaker 1: my way. By writing to this day at iHeartMedia dot com.

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Speaker 1: Thanks to Chandler Mays for producing the show, and thanks

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Speaker 1: to you for listening, and I'll see you back here

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Speaker 1: again soon for another day in history class