The Original Drone Camera
[Disclaimer: All proper credits for research resources are given at the conclusion of the article; no images in the article are main, and copyrighted images are credited and linked to the artist within the image.]
Today I was thinking about my next article for the blog, wanting to stick with a photography-related theme. I was tempted to cheat and just post a photography quotation, as happens when the idea well is kind of low. During a break from scrubbing the life out of some linoleum coated in 10 years' layers of floor wax, out of the clear blue sky (pun fully intended) the thought of WWI carrier pigeons came to mind, followed then by the photography pigeons. Yes, they were a real thing. I took a break and began looking into it a bit further.
Disclaimer dedicated to all the teachers in my educational history, including my mother the English major:
Now, every English and Journalism advisor I've ever had would cringe at what I am about to do here, but in the interest of complete transparency, I'll admit that the next couple of informational paragraphs were copied and pasted from my sources, in order to save me the trouble of retyping/rewording. ( The advisors would probably already have been cringing at my rampant usage of run-on sentences as well, by this time. ) Yes, I know. I can be kinda lazy like that. I feel, though, as if it isn't quite plagiarism if I am honest about it up front and giving credit at the end of my article. So, read on for the background story on the Photography Pigeons....
Julius G. Neubronner
Julius G. Neubronner, born 1851 in Kronberg im Taunus as the son of a pharmacist, cultivated a curious passion for photography. In 1903 Julius Neubronner, an apothecary in the German town of Kronberg near Frankfurt, resumed a practice begun by his father half a century earlier and received prescriptions from a sanatorium in nearby Falkenstein via pigeon post. (The pigeon post was discontinued after three years when the sanatorium was closed.) He delivered urgent medications up to 75 grams (2.6 oz) by the same method, and positioned some of his pigeons with his wholesaler in Frankfurt to profit from faster deliveries himself. When one of his pigeons lost its orientation in fog and mysteriously arrived, well-fed, four weeks late, Neubronner was inspired with the playful idea of equipping his pigeons with automatic cameras to trace their paths. This thought led him to merge his two hobbies into a new "double sport" combining carrier pigeon fancying with amateur photography. (Neubronner later learned that his pigeon had been in the custody of a restaurant chef in Wiesbaden.)
The first aerial photographs had been taken in 1858 by the balloonist Nadar; in 1860 James Wallace Black took the oldest surviving aerial photographs, also from a balloon. As photographic techniques made further progress, at the end of the 19th century some pioneers placed cameras in unmanned flying objects. In the 1880s, Arthur Batut experimented with kite aerial photography. At the turn of the century, Julius Neubronner used pigeons to deliver medications. He designed an aluminum breast harness to which a lightweight time-delayed miniature camera could be attached. Neubronner's German patent application was initially rejected, but was granted in December 1908 after he produced authenticated photographs taken by his pigeons.
Neubronner's patent for the Pigeon Camera device
The following are examples of some of the images Neubronner obtained from his feathered "drone cameras" :
Frankfurt, Germany, via pigeon cam
Schlosshotel Kroneberg; note pigeon's wingtips in image!
Not bad images, either, considering the camera technology of the early 20th century, and the "drone" that was carrying it!
First off, I thought it pretty wild that Neubronner had the notion to send drugs willy-nilly out into the wild blue strapped to a carrier pigeon. I understand the fact that carrier pigeons were well-trained and possess a homing instinct that keeps them from getting lost (although the one that made a pit stop at the restaurant in Wiesbaden aparently couldn't be trusted with meds). However, what's the guarantee that bad weather, a hunter afield, or a cat in the city wasn't going to cut the assignment short, and leave the recipient of the prescription hanging?
Once I got the floor finished (and it turned out fabulous, by the way), I did a little more digging into this business about carrier pigeons having been used in the Great War. Turns out, not only the American troops, but other nations' military forces utilized all sorts of animals during wartime, including pigeons:
Pack horse with gas mask is loaded up with equipment during the Battle of Pilckem Ridge, Belgium, 1917
German war dog, fitted with apparatus for laying telephone wires, 1917
Dog handler of the Royal Engineers (Signals) reads a message brought to him by a messenger dog, 1918
French troops with two carrier pigeons strapped in their travelling basket.
Pigeons were widely used since antiquity to carry messages and for the same purpose they served all Armies – not only the British Intelligence Service – during the WWI, and even later, during WWII. Faster than dogs, these birds were trained to fly, even for a long period and through the bombardments. Each time a telephone line or a radio connection was not available, pigeons were able to keep important dispatches from the front to a settled position – generally the headquarters –, no matter where they were released.
So the next time you are out at the city park, or somewhere downtown, watching or feeding (or cursing) the "winged rats", as many folks call them, stop for a second, and remember the noble pigeons of World War I, and pharmacist Julius Neubronner's invention of the "pigeon cam", and then consider the technology of today, with digital cameras and drones.....and maybe toss out an extra handful of crumbs for them.
Or, maybe just watch them from afar. Whatever feathers your nest.
Image ©Jeremy Ojua, Pigeon at Fogarty Beach
Research credits go to Wikipedia; Rorhof.com; book, "The Pigeon Photographer" available at Rorhof.com ; Imperial War Museum; FirstWorldWar.com; Slate.com; WorldWarOne.it ; DailyMail.com.
Photo credits to the above websites also; and to Jeremy Ojua, and Simon de Glanville, as credited beneath their own images.