The First Attempt at Aerostatic Photography
“Nothing will ever be equal to the moment of hilarity (sic) that overtook all my being. As soon as I felt that I was fleeing the earth, I did not experience pleasure, but happiness. Having escaped from the terrible torments of persecution and cal- umny, I felt that I was responding to everything by rising above it all. This moral sentiment was soon succeeded by an even more vivid sensation: above us a sky without clouds; in the distance the most delicious sight … —Oh, my friend, I said to Mr. Robert, what happiness! … I wish I could hold here the last of our detractors and tell him: ‘Look at this, wretched man!!! …’”
In these affectionate terms, the physicist Charles1—the first, with his companion Robert, to be lifted in the air by hydrogen gas—expresses himself after his initial ascent.
And forever, for all those who went up after Charles as well as for those who will go up in the basket of an aerostat, the sublime impression, emotional or physical, will invariably remain the same.
Free, calm, levitating into the silent immensity of welcoming and beneficent space, where no human power, no force of evil, can reach him, man seems to feel himself really living for the first time, enjoying, in a plenitude until then unknown to him, the wholeness of his health in his soul and body. Finally he breathes, free from all the ties with this humanity which ends up disappearing in front of his eyes, so small even in its greatest achievements—the works of giants, the labors of ants—, and in the struggles and the murderous strife of its stupid antagonism. Like the lapse of times past, the altitude that takes him away reduces all things to their relative proportions, to Truth. In this superhuman serenity, the spasm of ineffable transport liberates the soul from matter, which forgets itself, as if it no longer existed, vaporizes itself into the purest essence. Everything is far away: cares, remorse, disgust. How easily indifference, contempt, forgetfulness drop away from on high—and forgiveness descends …
Another ecstasy, however, calls us back to the admirable spectacle offered to our charmed gazes.
Underneath us, as if to honor us by accompanying our step, the earth unfolds into an immense carpet without borders, without beginning or end, in varying colors of which green is dominant, in all its nuances and in all its combinations. Fields in irregular grids look like those “quilts” in multicolored but harmonious pieces put together by the patient needle of the housekeeper. It seems that an inexhaustible box of toys has been abundantly spread on this earth, the earth that Swift revealed to us in Lilliput, as if all the factories of Karlsruhe had emptied their stock there. Toys these little houses with red and slate-gray roofs, toys this church, this prison, this citadel, the three dwellings to which all our present civilization comes down. Even more of a toy this hint of a train which sends to us from down below its shrill little shrieking whistle, as if to draw our attention, and which, so cute, moves slowly along—despite its fifteen leagues an hour—on its invisible rail, decorated with its small wisp of smoke … And what is this other rather white flake which I make out down there floating in space: the smoke of a cigar? No, a cloud.
This is indeed the planisphere, since there is no perception of differences in altitude. Everything is “in focus.” The river flows at the top level of the mountain; there is no perceptible disparity between the fields of alfalfa equally leveled and the established forests of ancient oaks.
And what purity of lines, what extraordinary clarity of sight in the smallness of this microcosm where everything appears to us with the exquisite impression of a marvelous, ravishing cleanliness! I found neither slag nor stain. Nothing but distance to escape all ugliness …
*
The invitation to the lens was in this case more than formal, imperative, and, so intense that our absorption was pushed to the vagueness of a dream, in truth it would have been necessary never to have even half-opened the door of a laboratory so that we wouldn’t have been immediately taken by the thought of photographing these marvels.
And since chance apparently wanted me to be the first photographer to be lifted in a balloon, it happened that a precedent fell on me that very well could have belonged to anyone else.
*
First of all, I had glimpsed here two of the most interesting applications.
From a strategic point of view, we are aware of what good fortune it is for a general in a war campaign to encounter the bell tower of a village from where a Master Sergeant can make his observations.
I was carrying my bell tower with me and my lens was able, successively and indefinitely, to shoot positives on glass which I would send directly from my basket to the headquarters, by means of a very simple form of delivery: a small box which would slide down to the ground through the length of a rope that would bring instructions back up to me, if necessary.
These images, immediately enlarged by projections under the eyes of the commander in chief, would present to him the entirety of his chessboard, as they would register progressively the minutest details of action and ensure for him incomparable superiority in conducting his part in the game.
Then—cedant arma!2—I would proceed to another no less important task.
*
Long ago, in Brittany, when there was a division of property between two families, the parents of each side would take their children there. They would place indicative markers, and immediately rush to the children and cover them with punches:
— In this way, the memorable beating that you have just received always will remind you on this day of the place, always to be respected, where the markers have been put.
This somewhat primitive mnemonic procedure has long been abandoned; but with what have we replaced it?
“This gigantic work of registering the land,” I said to myself, “with its army of engineers, surveyors, chainmen, draftsmen, accountants, had required more than a billion and more than half a century of work—to be done poorly.
“This year, today, I can finish it by myself in thirty days—and perfectly.
“A good captive aerostat, a good camera, these are my only weapons.
“No more preliminary triangulation, painfully built up on a stack of trigonometric formulas; no more dubious instruments, plane tables, compasses, alidades, graphometers; no more chains of convicts to drag through the valleys, hills, plowed fields, vineyards, swamps: we do not have to bother people at home anymore.
“No more of these uncertain works, prepared without uniformity, pursued and completed by approximation, without cohesion, without control or guarantee, by unsupervised personnel who sometimes can be made to forget their hours of work by the billiards hall in the next town.
“Miracle! I who all my life have professed a hatred of geometry that is equal only to my horror of algebra, I produce with the rapidity of thought plans more faithful than those of Cassini,3 more perfect than the maps of the Ministry of War!
“And what simplicity of means! My balloon held captive at the same height from each of the points determined in advance, I automatically record in one blow the surface of a million square meters, that is to say, one hundred hectares. And since in a single day I can travel through some ten stations, I can record in one day the land register of a thousand hectares!”
*
What a triumph!
In the future—thanks to me!—no more disputes, no more litigation—not even in Normandy.
And from the personal point of view of business, which I perhaps will be permitted not to forget entirely, I already foresee the pleasant perspective of a legitimate profit, which, well earned, will not be the despicable kind.
I made inquiries.
England has no land registry. At most, a civil state of public property.
Nothing in Russia, nothing in Italy, nothing in Spain, nothing anywhere.
Even by us, in France, even though all our provinces, except Corsica, are registered, the work was done in such a way that a number of localities in the Seine, in Eure, etc., just decided to have everything done over again. For three or four provinces, this redoing will cost no less than six hundred thousand francs from the budget, not including the additional one-off charge imposed by the municipalities. On this little point only, almost a million a year!
And all the rest! … It’s enough to make one dizzy. The imagination runs wild …
But, despite its enticing aspect, this “business” side is not the one that preoccupies me the most, and I must confess completely here: in my heart of hearts, I surprise myself by being somewhat exalted at the thought that the year 1855 will perhaps not be too unworthy of its elder, the year 1783, and that I will have, that I will be the first to have, the honor of developing two new and most precious applications of the French discovery of our Montgolfier …
Absolute certainty, after all, for who could prevent my lens from returning to me what, like my eye, it sees? And if it happens to lose itself in the eccentricity of some distortion, nothing seems easier than to rectify its spherical aberrations mathematically with any mnb2 whatsoever.
But the inconvenience of the mobility of my basket still remains, as captive as it is, with all its movements, back and forth, forth and back, left or right, top to bottom and bottom to top, without forgetting the gyrations. But all my precautions are taken and, although we have yet neither the gelatin-bromide nor the always-victorious ingenuities of the glorious High Priest of the Snapshot, our friend Marey, I do not doubt that the distance of objects will make my task easy.
And without delving any further, passing immediately as always from the dream to action, I run to register my patent.
(I will have gotten so many of these patents!—And for what! …)
*
But in the Photographopolis the word had already spread, and, even before being launched, photography-from-the-balloon shakes our little world. Friends come running.
What is today—some thirty-five years later—an everyday, elementary task, at the level of the lowest assistant in the laboratory, seemed then to everyone impracticable, improbable. It is always necessary to repeat Biot’s saying:
“Nothing is easier than what was done yesterday, nothing more impossible than what will be done tomorrow.”
Practitioners shake their heads, but they are not the least of the suspicious, who include all the top guns. It is Bertsch who leaves his astronomy laboratory to say to me that I am attempting the unrealizable. The elder Bisson confirms; the good Le Gray says to me:
— You’ll spend money that you don’t have, and break the neck you do have, for nothing!
And my excellent master Camille d’Arnaud begs me to remain quiet.
But who or what can stop me once I have given in to one of my sudden bursts of enthusiasm? …
I have already chartered a balloon, plus a member of the Godard tribe to maneuver it4—and the date is fixed.
*
Feverishly I prepared the organization of the laboratory that I have to install in my basket, since we are not yet in the blessed time when our descendants will carry a laboratory in their pocket, and we must cook up there. Thus, all our equipment is there, in its place. And we should not forget anything, since it is not convenient to go up and down too often.
The basket, as spacious as the six hundred cubic meters of the aerostat allow, that has to lift with its cables only my technician and me, has been fitted to perfection. Everything is methodically within reach, stowed away or hung up in its place. We are there as if we were at home, and Bertsch would immediately exchange his narrow little sentry box on rue Fontaine-Saint-Georges, this real umbrella cover from where he ogles his planets, for our aerial laboratory.
The tent is hung in the circle of the aerostat, impermeable to the slightest diurnal ray with its two-sided orange and black jacket, and with its all-too-little skylight of yellow aphotogenic glass which gives me just the light needed. It’s hot down there, for the operator and for the operation. But our collodion and our other products do not know it, immersed as they are in their ice baths.
My lens, vertically fixed, is a Dallmeyer, this says it all, and the click of the horizontal guillotine that I have devised (another patent!) in order to open and close it in one breath, works impeccably.
Finally, I have guarded against the movements of the basket, in the best way possible: our upward force is such that our cables, departing not from the basket but from the equator of the aerostat, are so tight as to nearly make the balloon’s jacket burst. I will operate only in calm weather and, if the elasticity of my ropes and cables is felt at my altitude, fixed at three hundred meters, I will reduce it to two hundred, to a hundred: I must succeed.
*
Finally, everything is here, everything is ready!
I board …
— First ascent: result—zero! …
— Second ascent: —nothing!! …
— Third ascent: —nothingness!!! …
I had initially been astonished—then anxious: here I am terrified …
What is happening? …
*
And I go up, I go up and up again and again, always—without any success.
With each new failure, however hard I search, however hard I look and look again: nothing has been forgotten or neglected, nothing is wrong. Ten times, twenty times, my baths have been filtered, refiltered, replaced, all my products changed.
How is it that invariably, inexorably, I obtain only a series of plates veiled by black soot, without a sign, without even the suspicion of an image? How is it that, as if under a cast spell, I cannot get out of these opaque, fuliginous plates, from this night that pursues me?
“The others,” could they have been right?
Impossible. I will never admit that the lens does not render at all what it sees. Of course, it must be an accident, just an accident in the laboratory, unexplained until now, an accident which prolongs itself cruelly, indeed, and perseveres beyond the plausible—but about which I will be right!
I will not budge: whatever the cost, I will continue my ascents until I get to the bottom of this.
*
But “whatever the cost” is easily said. Every successive ascent, financed by me alone, costs a lot and exhausts my more than meager resources; everything that I earn, everything I have is spent there, and the thousand-franc notes run out quickly …
In addition, here comes the winter, scarcely propitious to my attempts. Will I then have to stay with my shame of being defeated and to bite my fists until next spring, waiting to begin again?
One time, one more time, let’s try! And with all my force of application, with all the concentration of my will, this last time, I try …
Again, nothing, nothing, nothing!!!
A spell!!!
*
In every one of these ascents, when, wearily unable to extricate myself from the black series, I would end up putting off the new attempt until the next time, I would not forget, as one might think, a beautiful “Release everything!,” offering to myself, at least as a consolation and compensation, the pleasure of a free ascent. Like the pastry chef who, for lack of customers, eats his own sweets.
This last time, insisting, I had prolonged my useless struggle longer than the previous ascent, and the night was falling together with us as we were descending, very near Paris, in an unknown little valley, almost deserted and charming then, called Petit Bicêtre.
There was no wind. We had just sat gently next to a big apple tree. One of the Godard crew members was preparing to empty and fold his balloon:
— Stop! …
I was struck just then by an idea—why shouldn’t I try one more time the next morning, independently of the results, since I am here, all ready? The expenses are incurred, the gas is paid, and, my valve well closed, there is no danger that gas will escape while the balloon is dilated tonight, since already the cold is biting. I will therefore leave the balloon where it is, well moored to this honest apple tree and, in any case, under good surveillance. I will load my basket with millstones and send my assistant, who will bring me other newer products, to Paris.
A night passes quickly, even at Petit Bicêtre—and who knows if tomorrow morning, finally? …
*
I am up at dawn. The weather is overcast, a gray and icy drizzle falls. Decidedly I am not lucky.
But there is something else, too: I can’t see my balloon anymore!!! … Yes, here it is! But in what state?
This balloon to which we said goodnight a few hours ago, so tall and proud on its peduncle like a majestic mushroom, I find it again folded in on itself, collapsed, shapeless. The cold of the night has condensed its gas, and in addition to the net, the ropes have been weighed down by this so inopportune drizzling rain. The bad luck continues. Will I be able to go up at least?
The basket is emptied of the millstone. While we maintain it without difficulty, I clear off the so carefully installed laboratory, the tent, everything, even my famous horizontal guillotine (in patent!), which I will substitute with my hand: I will carry with me only my camera obscura and my plate glass prepared with a frame.
I take my place in the basket: it barely makes a half-turn around itself without leaving the ground, as if discouraged and unable to make such a big effort.
In this almost nothing, there is nevertheless a small indication of ascent and it is evident that even a very small lightening will be enough to get me up, since this weighing in quintals is ultimately as delicate and sensitive as that of the centigrams on the pharmacist’s scales.
There can be no hesitation: I will lighten the load by unfastening my basket: I will hold onto the circle. Then, despite the cold, I take off my coat, which I let fall to the ground, then my vest, and then my boots, then … But can I say this, and how to say it? Having taken off everything in regard to the exterior (there are no ladies? …), I even relieve myself of everything that can weigh me down—and I rise at last to approximately eighty meters … I have immediately opened and closed my lens and I shout impatiently:
— Descend!
I am pulled to the ground. With a leap, I rush into the inn where, palpitating, I develop my image …
What happiness! There is something! …
*
I persist and I try again: little by little the image appears, quite indecisive, quite pale—but clear, certain. …
I emerge triumphant from my improvised laboratory.
It is only a simple positive on glass, very feeble in this so hazy atmosphere, all stained after so many adventures, but what does it matter! It is impossible to deny it: here beneath me are the only three houses of the small town: the farmhouse, the inn, and the police station, as befits every traditional Petit Bicêtre. One can distinguish perfectly on the road a tapestry maker whose cart stopped before the balloon, and on the tiles of the roofs the two white doves that had just landed there.
I was right then!
*
But how, why, could I only this desperate time obtain what had been refused to me so implacably until then?
Suddenly, an illumination, and I at last have the explanation that my lay reader, more sagacious than me, has already guessed.
This time, not having gas to spare, I ascended with the valve closed—this valve that the elementary prudence of all aeronauts always leaves wide open, at every departure, in order to give vent to the excess gas which expands as the balloon rises, and therefore to prevent an explosion.
Now, during each of my ascents, this valve, gushing, would spew out sulfured hydrogen in torrents onto my developing baths: silver iodide with hydrogen sulfur, a wicked couple irrevocably condemned to never produce children. By not having imposed here an immediate divorce, and from the very first encounter, I undoubtedly had deserved to pay even more dearly for my lack of observation and deduction.
But if I have had shortcomings, I forgive myself for them, as I am so happy finally to have “broken the spell.”
Since the explanation of my mistakes has been revealed, I am, in all tranquility, quite sure to obtain up there all the perfect shots that I will need, to prove to the great scientists that I was right against them—and my son will be able to say that his father was the first to have the honor of actualizing aerostatic photography. He will do other things, too, more and better: “the first preoccupation of a father,” my excellent cousin Charles wrote to me, “must be to leave behind a son better than him.”
*
And to all those who come I display my negative, however imperfect it may be, explaining the hows and whys it was transported … But what a new stroke of lightning on the very evening of that beautiful morning!
A friend visits me at dinnertime. Naturally, he has barely come in and I have already shown him the famous negative, and all excited, with my usual lyricism when I have mounted a new hobbyhorse, I tell him both my theory and my continual failures, and their explanation, and my experience of that morning and my expectations (patented!) …
And then the friend—like ice:
— But, my poor good man, it is known, your business, well known! You’re by no means the first. I read all this, not even eight days ago, printed fully … The book is very curious. It’s by a Mister … Mister … wait a second!—A gentleman who has something to do with compressed air … Mr. … Andraud! That is it: Mr. Andraud! And there were even photographs at this year’s exhibition obtained from the basket of a balloon …
*
The blow is hard!!! …
A bell rings, and two people already leave in two directions, running in search of the book I have such a thirst to see …
They finally bring it to me: it has an entirely honest air, with its modest appearance, this villain of a book!
WORLD’S FAIR OF 1855
A FINAL SUPPLEMENTARY PRESENTATION
AT THE
PALACE OF INDUSTRY
Industrial Sciences, Fine Arts, Philosophy
BY
MR. ANDRAUD
The science of power consists in using well the power of science.
—Napoleon
PARIS
GUILLAUMIN AND CO. BOOKSELLERS
Publishers of the Journal of Economists, of the collection
of Principal Economists of the Dictionary
of Public Economy, etc.
14 RUE RICHELIEU, 14
and the author, Rue Mogador, 4
1855
I flip through the pages, feverishly—and I get to page 97 …
There it is!!!
TOPOGRAPHY
No. II. Land Surveying by daguerreotype.
The book falls from my hands …
How had I not read this? … What a beautiful patrimony lost! … Not to mention all the thousand-franc notes thrown there …
Painfully disappointed, I pick up the book again and I skim …
Suddenly:
— But, you brute! I shouted, you can’t even read!
“The brute” (it’s my friend) couldn’t even read, in fact, or rather, like many others, he had read only with his eyes.
The book by the learned engineer was a book of pure science fiction: this Supplementary Presentation at the World’s Fair: it was Mr. Andraud himself who had put it together, magnificently, it must be said, without sparing millions, as if he were the State, Pereire, or Rothschild,5 and the prodigious and transcendental dreamer had piled up there all the fantastical but no less precious treasures, all the accumulated desiderata in his fecund and three-sided imagination as learned man, as poet, and as philanthropist.
We would find there successively exhibited, explained and described, everything that is still missing from our needs as civilized people—and part of which is achieved today:
— the escalator,
— the balanced-load wheelbarrow,
— a definitive system for paving,
— awnings to cover sidewalks,
— instantaneous vegetation,
— a universal filter,
— plant meats,
— garment reform,
— a new combustible,
— an air clock,
— the universal prime mover,
— the planimetry of a house,
— the theater of science,
— the unlimited propagation of sound (Edison, watch out! …),
— land surveying by the daguerreotype, etc.,
and a whole host of other ingenuities disseminated handsomely, without precautions or patents of any kind. What would it matter to this millionaire of ideas if he were robbed!
The episode had alarmed me so intensely that I wanted to see the terrible man who had caused it, which gave me the opportunity to make the acquaintance of a spirit absolutely superior and at the same time of the most modest and likable man. It is unfortunately on a tomb that I lay this wreath in respectful and affectionate remembrance.
I never had the leisure or the curiosity to determine whether Mr. Andraud’s book had appeared before or after I got my patent.
It did not matter much: I know now that its author was too affluent in his own right to need to take anything from me and, as for me, I was quite sure that I had not taken anything from him.
There are at certain times endemic synchronisms in human thought, in the moments when our imagination finds itself ordered to respond to our needs. It is in this respect that it was necessary to formulate the saying: this idea was in the air.
*
Starting in the first days of the following spring—1856—I obtained, from the first attempt this time, together with a dozen other points of view, a snapshot of the avenue du Bois de Boulogne, with the top part of the Arc de Triomphe, the perspec- tive from Ternes, Batignolles, Montmartre, etc.
This snapshot affirmed first,6 despite its imperfection, the practical possibility of aerostatic photography: this was above all what I had aimed at.
As for its cadastral application, my very eminent friend, Colonel Laussedat, explained to me that it was impossible.
My innate, absolute intractability in the face of everything that is exact science prevented me from following the explanation in its entirety; but before the assertion of such authority, I could only bow—and that’s what I did.
Later, I had the satisfaction of seeing a number of magnificent aerostatic attempts effortlessly obtained by Paul Nadar, by the brothers Tissandier, Ducom, etc.,7 and by many others still—and even by the very obstinate mahouts of the École aérostatique of Meudon, who insist on raising flying fish that do not fly …