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THE DEVELOPMENT OF MILITARY AIR PHOTO INTERPRETATION
by
John H. Roscoe.
The following pages briefly describe airphoto analysis in terms of its early
history, the impetus given it by World War I, the interwar years, World War
IT and its present status.
Early history. The first known aerial photograph was made by Nadar
(1893) in Paris in the year 1858. Taft (1938) states that the first American
airphoto was made over Boston in 1860. It is quite likely that a number of
experimental photographs were made from balloons at this time with the ex-
perimenters being entirely unaware of each other. Balloon and kite photography
continued in an experimental state until the advent of the first world war.
According to Newbronner (1949), even carrier pigeons were employed as aerial
photographers by the Prussian military forces during this period.
World War I. In the early part of the first world conflict the Germans
installed cameras in both lighter and heavier-than-air craft, an action soon
followed by the Allies. The differences between the cameras, the resulting
airphotos and the quality of photo interpretation of the two world wars are
comparable to the more familiar differences between the numbers and capabili-
ties of the aircraft used in the two wars. Aerial photography of World War I
was used for intelligence, engineering and mapmaking purposes, but methodolo-
gy, instrumentation and aircraft had not advanced sufficiently at that time for
photo interpretation to become recognized and firmly established as an essential
component of the intelligence, engineering and cartographic fields.
Nevertheless, this first nebulous acquaintance that many men in military
service had with photographic reconnaissance and photo interpretation during
World War I was one of the prime reasons for the significant postwar increase
in civil photo analysis.
T'he interwar years. The applied science of photogrammetry advanced most
rapidly during the two decades between the wars. A large number of aerial
survey companies were formed after World War I, many with pilots, aircraft
and cameras left over from the conflict. Although the great majority of these
companies failed, several of them, such as Abrams Aerial Survey Corporation
and The Fairchild Aerial Surveys, managed to secure contracts and produced
mapping photography of such good quality that they were able to survive and
become large firms in a highly competitive business with a limited market. The
private aerial survey companies, usually under government contract, and the
government's own aircraft produced a tremendous amount of aerial photog-
raphy, which by the end of the interwar period covered most of the area of
the continental United States at scales suitable for both mapping and inter-
pretation.
Coincident with the vastly improved source of supply for airphotos
provided by the government and by the private survey corporations, was the
rapid development made in photo interpretation. For the first time articles
devoted to the analysis of aerial photography began to appear in small but
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