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AIRPLANE PHOTOGRAPHY
PREFACE
Airplane photography had its birth, and passed througha period of feverish development, in the Great War. Probablyto many minds it figures as a purely military activity.Such need not be the case, for the application of aerialphotography to mapping and other peace-time problemspromises soon to quite overshadow its military origin. Ithas therefore been the writer's endeavor to treat the subjectas far as possible as a problem of scientific photography,emphasizing those general principles which willapply no matter what may be the purpose of making photographsfrom the air. It is of course inevitable that whoeverat the present time attempts a treatise on this newestkind of photography must draw much of his material fromwar-time experience. If, for this reason, the problems andillustrations of this book are predominantly military, itmay be remembered that the demands of war are far moresevere than those of peace; and hence the presumption isthat an account of how photography has been made successfulin the military plane will serve as an excellent guideto meeting the peace-time problems of the near future.
It is assumed that the reader is already fairly conversantwith ordinary photography. Considerable space has indeedbeen devoted to a discussion of the fu