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KITE PHOTOGRAPHY 
The use of kites for obtaining aerial photographs developed as 
an outgrowth of the adoption of kites to meteorological investigations. 
In England, E. D. Archibald, a meteorologist, is given credit for making 
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the first successful photographs from kites about 1882. Meanwhile, 
across the Channel in France, A. Batut, of Paris, began experiments in 
kite photography in 1886. Batut later recorded his achievements in a 
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textbook published in Paris in 1890. 
Archibald's system embodied use of several kites, attached tandem- 
style to each other, with the camera suspended below the furthermost 
kite on the line. Batut used only one lozenge-shaped kite, to whose 
backbone the camera was attached by a triangular support. To release 
the shutter he provided a "slow match", or fuse, which was lit before 
the kite was raised, and which eventually ignited a thread controlling 
the shutter. Simultaneously, also, release of a piece of paper indi 
cated to the operator that the exposure was completed. To determine 
the altitude at which the picture was taken, Batut's equipment included 
an aneroid barometer with a self-registering photographic apparatus. 
As the camera's shutter closed, the movement opened a tiny aperture, 
through which the rays of the slow match printed on a strip of photo 
graphic paper the shadows of two needles, from which the altitude could