Balloons- Stepping Stone Technology

Out of the three readings this week, I was most intrigued by Robert Doty’s “Aloft With Balloon and Camera.”  It was interesting to read about this “stepping stone” technology and the way it paved the way for aerial photography despite the many setbacks and failures experienced by the first aerial photographers.  The way this technology came and went so quickly reminded in many ways of how the Walkman paved the way for things such as mp3 players and iPods by discovering and working through the issues with the initial technology, and then being set by the wayside.  In the reading we learned about Samuel A. King and James W. Black’s photographs of Boston taken from a balloon.  It was interesting to compare that image with the hand drawn bird’s eye view of the same city found in Ronald E. Grim’s “Which Way North? How to Read a Bird’s Eye View”.  While although the hand drawn images of the whole city may at first be more impressive, I found the photograph to be more thought-provoking because it showed the denseness of the city and I could better imagine the lives of the people living there.