Remote Sensing Of The Earth: A Synoptic View

SEP 01, 1989

Space‐based and aerial images can provide information about Earth resources, agricultural conditions, weather patterns and a host of other phenomena that would be impossible to observe from the ground.

DOI: 10.1063/1.881184

John W. Schott

Remote sensing of the Earth may be traced back to the first prehistoric explorer who climbed a nearby hill to study the lay of the land. But it was not until 150 years ago that Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre and Joseph Nicéphore Niepce invented the daguerreotype, which provided the foundation for modern photography and, through it, a means to record a remotely sensed image. Twenty years later, in 1859, Gaspard Félix Tournachon Clateu (later known in the literature as Félix Nadar) took the first known aerial image from a balloon. That set the stage for the use of balloon‐based cameras by Union troops to photograph Confederate defenses around Richmond, Virginia, during the Civil War. Kites were also used as platforms for early photography. A particularly notable example is a very‐large‐format image $(1.4×2.4 m)$ taken by G. R. Lawrence after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire. A cluster of 17 kites flown from a ship in the bay carried the camera aloft. The first known photos from an aircraft were taken in 1909 in Italy by a passenger in a plane piloted by Wilbur Wright. Aerial photography was used for reconnaissance during World War I and was further developed for that purpose during World War II, resulting in the creation of special cameras and films, including color and color infrared film for detecting camouflage.

References

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More about the Authors

John W. Schott. Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, New York.