51 
C. H. Gibbs Smith, a Companion, Royal Aeronautical Society, in 
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his book on the subject of ballooning and aerial voyages , tells about 
the French photographic scientist, Rene Dagron, who, during the escape 
from Paris in 1870, u-sed 57 pigeons to carry 100,000 microfilm messages 
into Paris, which was then under seige. 
Robert S. Quackenbush, Jr., former president of the American Society 
of Photogrammetry, in his recent article in the Manual of Photo-Interpre 
tation, mentions one Julius Neubronner, who, in 1909, published a 
pamphlet describing carrier pigeon aerial photography. Neubronner's 
camera permitted 35 automatic exposures, each 6 x 9 cm. In commenting 
upon his ideas, he is said to have remarked: 
"Just at the moment when men transform themselves into birds, 
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the birds become photographers'." 
AIRPLANE PHOTOGRAPHY 
Almost sixty-one years ago, on the windswept dunes of Kittyhawk, 
North Carolina, aviation history was made by two bicycle mechanics 
from Dayton, Ohio. On December 17, 1903, Wilbur and Orville Wright 
achieved powered flight with a heavier-than-air flying machine, there 
by releasing man from his shackles as an earth-bound creature, and 
thrusting him into the air and space ages which followed Five years 
later, almost to the day, the use of the airplane for aerial reconnais 
sance was already being forecast in scientific circles. One author 
went so far as to predict that: