Further to this book, on the theme of aerial photography from balloon or from kite, see also Laussedat's conferences which have then been collected in one work published in 3 volumes between 1901 and 1903.

 LA MÉTROPHOTOGRAPHIE

Colonel  Aimé Laussedat

published in 1899 by the Société Française de Photographie

 

Metrophotography is the first designation of photogrammetry, or the technique to make surveys or maps from photographs. Aime Laussedat has been the forerunner and he has been named "father of Photogrammetry". However, this booklet which is the key of the historical story of the origins of this technique is often ignored.

 

A. Laussédat has not achieved any aerial picture, neither from balloon,n or from kite.  This work, text of a conference he held at the Societe Francaise de Photographie, is only reporting and describing  the episodes of the working out of his photogrammetric method.

 

Why this book in the topic of aerial photography?

To me, it was not possible not to evoke Laussedat's work which opens an extraordinary development of aerial photography which consequences are big. All our GPS applications drift from it!

The colonel Aimé Laussédat (1819-1907) was a serviceman, polytechnician engineer. He was a great scientist, respected and honoured. Basically a mathematician and a geometry and astronomy teacher, he promoted the development of measurement instruments, and without been photograph or balloon pilot, he devoted so much to these two techniques that he has elected president of both the Photographic and the Aeronautic societies. His main work is the photogrammetry but there is not only that. At the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers  which he has been the director, he created a fund of photographs, and he organized an exhibition of aerial pictures. A. Batut and E. Wenz have collaborated for the adjustement of aerial techniques meant to photogrammetry.

This paper lets introduce to photogrammetry and understand how at the end of the XIXth century the convergence of Laussedat's method, of the progress in photography and the start of aeronautic  has been able to articulate and combine between each other for applications which are the base of our today most advanced technological applications.

 

This topic could not have been complete without giving to Aime Laussedat the place he deserves and the credit which suit to his work and to his devotion  for the development and promotion of photographic and aeronautic techniques.