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Use of '''pigeon photographers''' was a technique for [[aerial photography]], invented in 1907 by the German apothecary [[Julius Neubronner]], who was also a user of [[pigeon post]] to carry medications. A [[homing pigeon]] was fitted with an aluminum breast harness to which could be attached a lightweight time-delayed miniature camera. Neubronner gained a German Patent in December 1908 after providing authenticated photographs taken in this way, the patent initially having been rejected. He further publicized the technique at the 1909 Dresden ''Internationale Photographische Ausstellung'', selling some images as [[postcard]]s at the 1910 Frankfurt International Aerospace Exhibition and at the 1910 and 1911 [[Paris Air Show]]s. German experiments stopped after World War I because of a lack of military or commercial interest in the technology, but were briefly taken up in the 1930s by a Swiss [[clockmaker]] and reportedly also by the German and French militaries and the American [[Central Intelligence Agency]] (CIA).
Use of '''pigeon photographers''' was a technique for [[aerial photography]], invented in 1907 by the German apothecary [[Julius Neubronner]], who was also a user of [[pigeon post]] to carry medications. A [[homing pigeon]] was fitted with an aluminum breast harness to which could be attached a lightweight time-delayed miniature camera. Neubronner gained a German Patent in December 1908 after providing authenticated photographs taken in this way, the patent initially having been rejected. He further publicized the technique at the 1909 Dresden ''Internationale Photographische Ausstellung'', selling some images as [[postcard]]s at the 1910 Frankfurt International Aerospace Exhibition and at the 1910 and 1911 [[Paris Air Show]]s. German experiments stopped after World War I because of a lack of military or commercial interest in the technology, but were briefly taken up in the 1930s by a Swiss [[clockmaker]] and reportedly also by the German and French militaries and the American [[Central Intelligence Agency]] (CIA).


Major challenges of the technique were the construction of sufficiently small and light cameras with a timer mechanism, the training and handling of the animals to carry these loads, as well as the limited control over the pigeons' position, orientation and speed when the photos were taken. In 2004, the [[BBC|British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)]] used miniature television cameras attached to falcons and hawks to obtain live footage, and today some researchers, enthusiasts and artists similarly employ small digital photo or video cameras with various species of wild or domestic animals.
Major challenges of the technique were the construction of sufficiently small and light cameras with a timer mechanism, the training and handling of the animals to carry these loads, as well as the limited control over the pigeons' position, orientation and speed when the photos were taken. In 2004, the [[BBC|British Broadcasting Corporation]] (BBC) used miniature television cameras attached to falcons and hawks to obtain live footage, and today some researchers, enthusiasts and artists similarly employ small digital photo or video cameras with various species of wild or domestic animals.


==Origins==
==Origins==

Revision as of 09:49, 4 April 2011

Pigeon with German miniature camera, approximately World War I era

Use of pigeon photographers was a technique for aerial photography, invented in 1907 by the German apothecary Julius Neubronner, who was also a user of pigeon post to carry medications. A homing pigeon was fitted with an aluminum breast harness to which could be attached a lightweight time-delayed miniature camera. Neubronner gained a German Patent in December 1908 after providing authenticated photographs taken in this way, the patent initially having been rejected. He further publicized the technique at the 1909 Dresden Internationale Photographische Ausstellung, selling some images as postcards at the 1910 Frankfurt International Aerospace Exhibition and at the 1910 and 1911 Paris Air Shows. German experiments stopped after World War I because of a lack of military or commercial interest in the technology, but were briefly taken up in the 1930s by a Swiss clockmaker and reportedly also by the German and French militaries and the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Major challenges of the technique were the construction of sufficiently small and light cameras with a timer mechanism, the training and handling of the animals to carry these loads, as well as the limited control over the pigeons' position, orientation and speed when the photos were taken. In 2004, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) used miniature television cameras attached to falcons and hawks to obtain live footage, and today some researchers, enthusiasts and artists similarly employ small digital photo or video cameras with various species of wild or domestic animals.

Origins

Four-year-old homing pigeon that made 15 ascents in a balloon[1]

The first aerial photographs were taken in 1858 by the balloonist Nadar; in 1860 James Wallace Black took the oldest surviving aerial photographs, also from a balloon.[2] 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. Many others followed him, and high-quality photographs of Boston taken with this method by William Abner Eddy in 1896 became famous. Amedee Denisse equipped a rocket with a camera and a parachute in 1888, and Alfred Nobel also used rocket photography in 1897.[3][4]

Homing pigeons were used extensively in the 19th and early 20th centuries, both for civil pigeon post and as war pigeons. In the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, the famous pigeon post of Paris carried up to 50,000 microfilmed telegrams per pigeon flight from Tours into the besieged capital,[5] 100,000 state dispatches and a million private telegrams in total.[1] In an 1889 experiment of the Imperial Russian Technical Society at Saint Petersburg, the chief of the Russian balloon corps took aerial photographs from a balloon and sent the developed collodion film negatives to the ground by pigeon post.[6]

Julius Neubronner

Julius Neubronner (1914)

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.) Moreover, 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 in order 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.)[7]

After successfully testing a Ticka watch camera on a train and while riding a sled,[8] Neubronner began the development of a light miniature camera that could be fitted to a pigeon's breast by means of a harness and an aluminum cuirass. Using wooden camera models that weighed 30 to 75 grams (1.1 to 2.6 oz), the pigeons were carefully trained for their load.[9] To take an aerial photograph, Neubronner carried a pigeon to a location up to about 100 kilometres (60 mi) from its home, where it was equipped with a camera and released.[10] The bird, keen to be relieved of its burden, would typically fly home on a direct route, at a height of 50 to 100 metres (160 to 330 ft).[11] A pneumatic system in the camera controlled the time delay before a photograph was taken. To accommodate the burdened pigeon, the dovecote had a spacious, elastic landing board and a big entry hole.[9]

Aerial photographs of Schlosshotel Kronberg (top left) and Frankfurt (bottom left and center); pigeons fitted with cameras (right).
Top: Sectional view of patented pigeon camera with two lenses. Bottom: Pneumatic system. The camera was activated by inflating the chamber on the left. As the air slowly escaped through the capillary at the bottom, the piston moved back towards the left until it triggered the exposure.
The patented camera with cuirass, suspended from harness

According to Neubronner, there were a dozen different models of his camera. In 1907 he had sufficient success to apply for a patent. Initially his invention "Method of and Means for Taking Photographs of Landscapes from Above" was rejected by the German patent office as impossible, but after presentation of authenticated photographs the patent was granted in December 1908.[12] (The rejection was based on a misconception about the carrying capacity of domestic pigeons.[10]) In 1909 the technology became widely known through Neubronner's participation in the Internationale Photographische Ausstellung in Dresden[13] and the Internationale Luftschiffahrtausstellung in Frankfurt. Spectators in Dresden could watch the arrival of the pigeons, and the aerial photographs they brought back were turned into postcards.[2][14] Neubronner's photographs were awarded prizes in Dresden as well as at the 1910 and 1911 Paris Air Shows.[15]

A photograph of Schlosshotel Kronberg (then called Schloss Friedrichshof after its owner Kaiserin Friedrich) became famous due to its accidental inclusion of the photographer's wing tips. In a breach of copyright it was shown in German cinemas as part of the weekly newsreel in 1929.[16]

In a short book published in 1909, Neubronner described five camera models:

  • The "double camera" described in the patent had two lenses pointing in orthogonal directions (forward/backward), each with a focal length of 40 mm. Operated by a single focal-plane shutter, the camera could take two simultaneous glass plate exposures at a time determined by the pneumatic system.
  • A stereoscopic camera had similar characteristics, but both lenses pointed in the same direction.
  • One model was capable of transporting film and taking several exposures in a row.
  • One model had its lens fixed to a bag bellows. A scissor mechanism held the bellows in it its expanded state until the photo was taken, but condensed it immediately afterwards. This allowed one exposure of size 6 cm × 9 cm on a photographic plate, at a focal length of 85 mm.
  • In a panoramic camera, the focal-plane shutter was replaced by a rotation of 180° of the lens itself.[9] This model was the basis for the Doppel-Sport Panoramic Camera, which Neubronner tried to market around 1910. It captured a panoramic view on 3 cm × 8 cm film. It never went into serial production, though.[17]

In a 1920 pamphlet, Neubronner described his last model as weighing slightly more than 40 grams (1.4 oz) and being capable of taking 12 exposures.[12] In 2007, a researcher remarked that only little technical information is available about lenses, shutters and the speed of the photographic media, but reported that Neubronner obtained the film for his panoramic camera from ADOX. For this camera he estimated a film speed of ISO 25/15°–40/17° and a shutter speed of 1/60s–1/100s. The film was cut to the format 30mm × 60mm and bent into a concave shape to prevent unnecessary distortion due to the half-circle movement of the lens.[18]

In 1920, Neubronner found that ten years of hard work and considerable expenses had been rewarded only with his inclusion into encyclopedias and the awareness that an ancillary technology, the mobile dovecote (described below), had proved its worth in the war.[12] Neubronner's panoramic camera is displayed at the German Museum of Technology in Berlin and the Deutsches Museum in Munich.[19]

World War I

From very early on, Neubronner's invention was at least partially motivated by the prospect of military applications. At the time, photographic aerial reconnaissance was possible but cumbersome, since it involved balloons, kites or rockets.[12] The Wright brothers' successful flight in 1903 opened new possibilities, and in fact surveillance aircraft were introduced and perfected during the First World War. However, pigeon-based photography with all its practical difficulties promised to deliver complementary, detailed photographs taken from a lower height.[12]

Neubronner's mobile dovecote and darkroom as shown at 1909 exhibitions

The Prussian War Ministry was basically interested, but some initial skepticism could only be overcome through a series of successful demonstrations. The pigeons proved relatively indifferent to explosions, but an important difficulty under battle conditions was the fact that when a dovecote is moved, it takes relatively long to make the pigeons accept the new position.[12] The problem of making carrier pigeons accept a displaced dovecote with only a minimum of retraining had been tackled with some success by the Italian army around 1880;[20] the French artillery captain Reynaud solved it by raising the pigeons in an itinerant dovecote.[21] There is no indication that Neubronner was aware of this work, but he knew there must be a solution as he had heard of an itinerant fairground worker who was also a pigeon fancier with a dovecote in his trailer. At the 1909 exhibitions in Dresden and Frankfurt he presented a small carriage that combined a darkroom with a mobile dovecote in flashy colors. In months of laborious work he trained young pigeons to return to the dovecote even after it was displaced.[12]

In 1912,[14] Neubronner completed his task (set in 1909) of photographing the waterworks at Tegel using only his mobile dovecote. Almost 10 years of negotiations were scheduled to end in August 1914 with a practical test at a maneuver in Strasbourg, followed by the state's acquisition of the invention. These plans were thwarted by the outbreak of the war. Neubronner had to provide all his pigeons and equipment to the military, which tested them in the battlefield, with satisfactory results.[12][22]

In the end, reconnaissance by pigeon did not get off the ground. Instead, under the novel conditions of attrition warfare, war pigeons in their traditional role as pigeon post saw a renaissance. Neubronner's mobile dovecote found its way to the Battle of Verdun, where it proved so advantageous that similar facilities were used on a larger scale in the Battle of the Somme.[12] After the war, the War Ministry responded to Neubronner's inquiry to the effect that the use of pigeons in aerial photography had no military value and further experiments were not justified.[14]

The International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C. has a tiny room dedicated to carrier pigeons and pigeon photography in World War I.[23]

World War II

German toy soldier with camera pigeon
Michel created an operating manual, but could not find a production partner before World War II broke out.[24]
Patent drawing from Swiss patent

Despite the rejection given to Neubronner immediately after the First World War, in the 1930s it was reported that the German army in Munich trained pigeons for photography, and that the German pigeon cameras could take 200 exposures.[25] The French army responded with claims that they had developed film cameras for pigeons as well as a method for having the birds released behind enemy lines by trained dogs.[26]

Although war pigeons and mobile dovecotes were used extensively in World War II, it is not clear to what extent, if any, they were employed for aerial photography. On the allied side there were rumors that the Germans and the Japanese were employing Neubronner's invention, and as late as 1943 it was reported that the American Signal Corps was aware of the possibility of adopting the technique.[27]

Only one thing is certain: During the Second World War pigeon photography was employed in German nurseries in toy form. From around 1935 the toy figures produced under the brand Elastolin, some of which show motifs from before 1918 with updated uniforms, began to include a signal corps soldier with a pigeon transport dog. The soldier releases a pigeon that carries an oversized pigeon camera.[28]

Thanks to research conducted by the Musée suisse de l'appareil photographique at Vevey, much more is known about the pigeon cameras created around the same time by the Swiss clockmaker Christian Adrian Michel (1912–1980)[29] in Walde. Assigned to the Swiss Army's carrier pigeons service in 1931, in 1933 he began to adapt Neubronner's panoramic camera to 16 mm film while improving it with a mechanism that controlled the delay before the first exposure and transported the film between exposures. Nevertheless his camera, patented in 1937, weighed only 70 grams (2.5 oz). This may have been one of the first cameras with a clockwork.[30]

Michel's plan to sell his camera to the Swiss Army failed as he could not find a manufacturer for serial production. No more than around 100 cameras of this type were constructed.[24] After the Second World War broke out, Michel patented a shell and harness for the transport of items such as film rolls by carrier pigeon.[31] Between 2002 and 2007 three of his cameras were auctioned by Christie's in London.[29]

The Musée suisse de l'appareil photographique at Vevey holds around 1,000 photographs taken for test purposes during the development of Michel's camera.[32] Most of the photos were taken with 16mm orthopanchromatic Agfa film with a speed of ISO 8/10°. The exposed format was 10mm × 34mm. The quality was sufficient for a tenfold magnification.[33] In the catalog of the 2007 exhibition Des pigeons photographes? they are classified as test photos on the ground or from a window, human perspectives from the ground or from elevated points, aeroplane-based aerial photographs, aerial photographs of relatively high altitude that were probably taken by pigeons released from a plane, and only a small number of typical pigeon photographs.[32][34]

After World War II

In the United States, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) developed a battery-powered pigeon camera which is shown as part of the CIA Museum's virtual tour. According to the website, the details of the camera's use are still classified.[35] News reports suggest that this particular camera was used in the 1970s,[36] that the pigeons were released from planes, and that it was a failure.[37] In 1978 the Swiss magazine L'Illustré printed an aerial photograph of a street in Basel, taken by a pigeon of Febo de Vries-Baumann equipped with a camera with a hydraulic mechanism.[17] In 2002–03 the performance artist and pigeon fancier Amos Latteier experimented with pigeon photography using Advanced Photo System (APS) and digital cameras and turned the results into "PowerPointillist" lecture performances in Portland, Oregon.[38] In a 2008 film adaptation of Sleeping Beauty by the German director Arend Agthe, the prince invents pigeon photography and discovers Sleeping Beauty on a photo taken by a pigeon.[39]

In the 1980s a small number of high-quality replica Doppel-Sport cameras were made by Rolf Oberländer.[17] One was acquired in 1999 by the Swiss Camera Museum in Vevey,[40] and others have reportedly been sold as originals.[41]

Modern technology allows extension of the principle to video cameras. In the 2004 BBC program Animal Camera, Steve Leonard presented spectacular films taken by miniature television cameras attached to falcons and hawks, and transmitted to a nearby receiver by microwaves. The cameras have a weight of 28 grams (0.99 oz)*.[42] Miniature digital audio players with built-in video cameras can also be attached to pigeons.[43] In 2009 researchers made news when a peer-reviewed article discussed the insights they gained by attaching cameras to albatrosses. The lipstick-sized cameras took a photo every 30 seconds.[44] Cameras have also been attached to other animals, such as cats or dogs.[45]

Notes

  1. ^ a b Hildebrandt 1907, pp. 395–397.
  2. ^ a b Professional Aerial Photographers Association 2007. Cite error: The named reference "papa" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
  3. ^ Hildebrandt 1907, pp. 384–386.
  4. ^ Mattison 2008.
  5. ^ Fribourg 1892.
  6. ^ Hildebrandt 1907, p. 406.
  7. ^ Neubronner 1910, pp. 77–84.
  8. ^ Neubronner 1910, p. 84.
  9. ^ a b c Neubronner 1908, pp. 9–14.
  10. ^ a b Gradenwitz 1908b.
  11. ^ Feldhaus 1910.
  12. ^ a b c d e f g h i Neubronner 1920, pp. 23–31.
  13. ^ Le Matin 1909.
  14. ^ a b c Brons 2006a.
  15. ^ Wittenburg 2007, p. 20.
  16. ^ Brons 2006b, p. 24.
  17. ^ a b c Musée suisse de l'appareil photographique 2007, p. 6.
  18. ^ Wittenburg 2007, p. 18.
  19. ^ Deutsches Technikmuseum Berlin 2007, pp. 8–9.
    Deutsches Museum München 2007.
  20. ^ Revue militaire de l'étranger 1886.
  21. ^ Reynaud 1898.
  22. ^ Popular Science Monthly 1916.
  23. ^ Lui 2006.
  24. ^ a b Musée suisse de l'appareil photographique 2007, pp. 10–11.
  25. ^ Popular Mechanics 1931, Popular Mechanics 1932, The Canberra Times 1932, Popular Mechanix 1936.
  26. ^ Lectures pour tous 1932.
  27. ^ Flight 1943.
  28. ^ Schnug 1988.
  29. ^ a b Template:WebCite, Template:WebCite, Template:WebCite. Christie's auctions.
  30. ^ Häfliger 2008, p. 38.
  31. ^ Swiss patents CH 214355 and CH 214356.
  32. ^ a b Musée suisse de l'appareil photographique 2007, pp. 16–29.
  33. ^ Häfliger 2008, p. 41.
  34. ^ Berger 2008, p. 4.
  35. ^ CIA 2007.
  36. ^ Bridis 2003.
  37. ^ Eisler 2008.
  38. ^ Latteier 2003, Bowie 2003, Gallivan 2003.
  39. ^ Deutsche Kindermedienstiftung Goldener Spatz 2009.
  40. ^ Musée suisse de l'appareil photographique 2007, p. 4
  41. ^ Template:WebCite.
  42. ^ "Airborne". Animal Camera. 2004-03-05. BBC. BBC one. {{cite episode}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |episodelink= (help)
  43. ^ Newpigeonguy's channel on YouTube.
  44. ^ Sakamoto et al. 2009.
    de Swaaf 2009.
  45. ^ Petre 2008, Lakeman 2010.

Bibliography

Publications before 1945

Patents

  • Verfahren und Vorrichtung zum Photographieren von Geländeabschnitten aus der Vogelperspektive {{citation}}: Unknown parameter |country-code= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |description= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |inventor-first= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |inventor-last= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |issue-date= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |patent-number= ignored (help), filed 1907-06-20.
    • Procédé et appareil pour prendre des vues photographiques de paysages de haut en bas, 1908-11-02 {{citation}}: Unknown parameter |country-code= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |description= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |inventor-first= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |inventor-last= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |issue-date= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |patent-number= ignored (help), filed 1908-06-18.
    • Method of and Means for Taking Photographs of Landscapes from Above {{citation}}: Unknown parameter |country-code= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |description= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |inventor-first= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |inventor-last= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |issue-date= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |patent-number= ignored (help), filed 1908-06-19.
    • Vorrichtung zum Photographieren von Geländeabschnitten aus der Vogelperspektive {{citation}}: Unknown parameter |country-code= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |description= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |inventor-first= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |inventor-last= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |issue-date= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |patent-number= ignored (help), filed 1908-12-31.
  • Photographieapparat mit schwenkbarem, mit selbsttätiger Auslösung versehenem Objektiv, insbesondere für Brieftauben, 1937-12-01 {{citation}}: Unknown parameter |country-code= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |description= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |inventor-first= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |inventor-last= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |issue-date= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |patent-number= ignored (help), filed 1936-02-03.
    • Panoramakamera mit schwenkbarem Objektiv, insbesondere für Brieftauben, 1938-02-12 {{citation}}: Unknown parameter |country-code= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |description= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |inventor-first= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |inventor-last= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |issue-date= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |patent-number= ignored (help), filed 1936-02-14.
    • Appareil photographique à déclenchement automatique, particulièrement pour pigeons-messagers, 1936-09-21 {{citation}}: Unknown parameter |country-code= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |description= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |inventor-first= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |inventor-last= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |issue-date= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |patent-number= ignored (help), filed 1936-03-07.
    • Improvements in or relating to Panoramic-cameras {{citation}}: Unknown parameter |country-code= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |description= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |inventor-first= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |inventor-last= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |issue-date= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |patent-number= ignored (help), filed 1937-01-27.
    • Appareil photographique à déclenchement automatique, particulièrement pour pigeons-messagers {{citation}}: Unknown parameter |country-code= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |description= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |inventor-first= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |inventor-last= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |issue-date= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |patent-number= ignored (help), filed 1937-01-16.
  • Traggerät für Brieftauben, 1941-07-16 {{citation}}: Unknown parameter |country-code= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |inventor-first= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |inventor-last= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |issue-date= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |patent-number= ignored (help), filed 1940-06-22.
  • Depeschenhülse für Brieftaube, 1941-07-16 {{citation}}: Unknown parameter |country-code= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |description= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |inventor-first= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |inventor-last= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |issue-date= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |patent-number= ignored (help), filed 1940-06-22.

Publications after 1945

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