{"id":3846,"date":"2013-01-14T10:14:41","date_gmt":"2013-01-14T15:14:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/phillyhistory.wpengine.com\/?p=3846"},"modified":"2013-01-15T18:08:13","modified_gmt":"2013-01-15T23:08:13","slug":"the-rise-of-balloon-photography-in-philadelphia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/2013\/01\/the-rise-of-balloon-photography-in-philadelphia\/","title":{"rendered":"The Rise of Balloon Photography in Philadelphia"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
“Balloon View of Philadelphia from about one mile high, July 4th, 1893.” By William Nicholson Jennings. (PhillyHistory)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Jean-Pierre Blanchard<\/a> wanted to make a splash, figuratively, not literally. He arrived \u00a0from France, 220 years ago, planning a display of showmanship that would, if successful, be the first balloon ascension in America\u2014<\/em>and his 45th.<\/p>\n

On January 9, 1793, the French aeronaut and inventor readied his balloon in the prison yard at 6th and Walnut Streets, accepted best wishes from President George Washington and other luminaries, and floated skyward. Blanchard metaphorically lived his motto: Sic itur ad astra<\/em>\u2014to the stars. More precisely, he went to Deptford, New Jersey.<\/p>\n

If not made useful, such feats of technology, skill, daring and luck were of little value. Blanchard made use of his time aloft conducting a variety of measurements and experiments, the results of which were recorded in a small book published in Philadelphia with a pleasant illustration<\/a> of his balloon. Engravings were all they had in Blanchard\u2019s time; it would be nearly half a century before photography allowed aeronauts to dream of returning to earth with \u201cyou-are-there\u201d documentation.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe first successful aerial photographs in America<\/a>,\u201d taken above Boston in 1860, were made from Samuel A. King’s balloon, the “Queen of the Air.” And President Lincoln\u2019s war machine soon put aerial photography to work against Confederate troops. But King didn’t much care for sharing his basket with photographers. Another three decades passed before he went aloft with Philadelphia photographer William Nicholson Jennings<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In the early 1890s, King, brought the \u201cEagle Eyrie\u201d up from his home in Tinicum to Fairmount Park for annual July 4th ascensions. In 1934, Jennings reminisced about their partnership in \u201cSnapshots from Cloudland,\u201d published in the Journal of the Franklin Institute.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
William Nicholson Jennings’ view to the east: Girard College, Eastern State and North Philadelphia. July 4, 1893. (PhillyHistory)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As King prepped, Jennings found a moment to approach \u201cthe genial aeronaut to make a bid for a place in the basket for the purpose of making aerial snapshots.\u201d King stared back \u201cwith an eye blue as the sky he loved to sail in; stroked his long beard, fleecy as any cloud he had passed through, and remarked: \u2018My charge for a passenger is fifty dollars; but if you expect to make good photographs on your first balloon trip \u2026 you will be wasting your time and money.\u2019\u201d A first-time passenger would succumb to nerves and produce double exposures, blurred images, use erroneous settings, and on top of all of that, the summer\u2019s \u201cblue haze between balloon and landscape\u201d would result in \u201cthin,\u201d \u201cwashy\u201d negatives. Plus, King added, \u201cescaping coal gas from the balloon would create a chemical fog.\u201d<\/p>\n

Undeterred, Jennings conducted experiments from the top of the Washington, Monument and devised a combination of orthochromatic plates and a light yellow lens filters and got him \u201cbright, snappy\u201d negatives. He made a \u201cgas-tight\u201d camera, and showed both to King.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Re-enactment of the Nation\u2019s First Air Voyage, in \u201cLa Coquette.\u201d January 9, 1968. (PhillyHistory)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On the Fourth of July, 1893, as \u201cthe Municipal Band struck up \u2018My Sweetheart\u2019s the Man in the Moon,\u2019 all Jennings had to do was to \u201cforget nerves, wait until the desired section of landscape came into view\u201d hold his breath and press the button.\u201d He \u201cmade several exposures while passing over Philadelphia at the height of about a mile\u2026securing sharp, crisp, clear-cut negatives, from which I afterward made a number of 40\u201d x 50\u201d enlargements for exhibition at the Crystal Palace, London.\u201d<\/p>\n

King and Jennings would continue to collaborate, but their demise (King in 1914; Jennings in 1946) would hardly mark the end of the Philadelphia balloon story.<\/p>\n

In 1956, when Hollywood adapted Jules Verne\u2019s 1873 novel, Around the World in Eighty Days<\/em>, producer Mike Todd lined up an all-star cast including David Niven and the young Shirley McLaine. The film, which won an Academy Award for Best Picture, also featured appearances by Noel Coward, Buster Keaton, Peter Lorre, Red Skelton, Marlene Dietrich and Frank Sinatra. For the all-important role of the balloon, Todd turned to his friend; the self-described Philadelphia \u201cballoonatic\u201d Constance Wolf<\/a>, who lent \u00a0her beloved \u201cLa Coquette.\u201d The first woman to cross the Alps in a balloon, Wolf would promote the film by piloting “La Coquette\u201d over London and Paris after its release. No surprise that, in 1959, she would replicate Blanchard\u2019s first American ascension, and would inflate \u201cLa Coquette\u201d again for another re-enactment, seen here, in January 1968.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jean-Pierre Blanchard wanted to make a splash, figuratively, not literally. He arrived \u00a0from France, 220 years ago, planning a display of showmanship that would, if successful, be the first balloon ascension in America\u2014and his 45th. On January 9, 1793, the French aeronaut and inventor readied his balloon in the prison yard at 6th and Walnut […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3846"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3846\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}