A brief history of aerial photography With the advent of web
applications such as Google Earth, it is a common misconception
that aerial photography is relatively new. Admittedly because of
these websites it is now more commonplace, but in fact aerial
photography has been around since the mid nineteenth century. A
Frenchman called Nadar, whose real name was Gaspard Felix
Tournachon, took the very first aerial photograph (Fig. 1). He
was a French writer, caricaturist, photographer and tireless
innovator. In 1855 he patented the idea of using aerial
photographs in mapmaking and surveying. It was not until 1858,
however, that he was able to make a successful aerial
photograph, the world's first, from a balloon. The oldest
surviving photograph taken by Nadar was of the Arc de Triomphe
in 1868 (Fig. 2). His cameras were bulky and he even took a
darkroom with him! On October 13, 1860, James Wallace Black,
accompanied by Professor Sam King, ascended to an altitude of
1200 feet in King's balloon and photographed port