Dead
Media | 0.01-02.0 | 02.1-04.0
| 04.1-06.0 | 06.1-08.0 |
08.1-10.0 | 10.1-12.0 |
Subject: Dead Media Working Note 08.0
Dead media: Union telegraph balloons, Confederate
microfilm
From: bruces_AT_well.com (Bruce Sterling)
Source: SPIES AND SPYMASTERS OF THE CIVIL WAR by Donald
E. Markle, 1994. Barnes & Noble Books, ISBN 1-56619-976-X
War and espionage seem to be great generators of dead
media. They produce desperate extremes in which
communication is a matter of life and death, and in which
normal means of communication are subjected to severe
enemy attack. Necessity gives birth to invention, and
when necessity ceases those inventions often vanish, into
legendry or utter obscurity.
Diplomacy, espionage, courier service, scouting,
reportage, and postal service are generally seen as
distinct activities, but the lines between them blur under
stress.
Markle's book on US Civil War espionage and its
tradecraft offers interesting period parallels to the
1870-1871 siege of Paris, with its microfilm, mail
balloons and pigeon post.
page 35
"Late in the war Confederates reportedly used an
advanced form of photography to prepare their messages for
courier movement to Richmond."
(((Markle quotes the following letter.)))
United States Consulate
Toronto Prv Jany 3, 1865
Honorable W. H. Seward
Secretary of State
Washington, D.C.
Sir- The following facts having been given to me:
The Rebels in this city have a quick and successful
communications with Jeff Davis and the authorities in
Richmond, in the following manner. Having plenty of money
at their command, they employ British subjects, who are
provided with British passports, and also with passports
from Col (((blank))) which are plainly written; name and
date of issue on fine silk and are ingeniously secreted in
the lining of the coat. They carry dispatches, which are
made and carried in the same manner. These messengers
wear metal buttons, which, upon the inside, dispatches are
most minutely photographed, not perceptible to the naked
eye, but are easily read by the aid of a powerful lens.
This information is reliable, from a person who has
*seen* the dispatches, and has personal knowledge of the
facts....
Your Obedient Servant,
R.J. Kimball
"What Consular Kimball was reporting is in fact known
today as microfilm! The technique had been developed by a
Frenchman, Rene Prudent Dagron in 1860. The images were
on a 2 X 2 mm. diameter glass plate, and could be viewed
using a lens developed by Lord Stanhope around 1750."
(((Dagron the microfilmist and war profiteer featured
largely in Dead Media Working Note 04.4, which concerned
Dagron's crucial activities with balloon, pigeon and
microfilm during the Prussian siege of Paris. It is very
gratifying to learn for the first time that his full name
was Rene Prudent Dagron. Dagron may have invented his
microfilm technique in 1860, as Merkle claims, but his
"Traite de Photographie Microscopique" was first published
in Paris in 1864, according to John Douglas Hayhurst. It
is therefore astonishing to see Confederate/British spooks
apparently employing Dagron's microfilm technology as
early as January 1865. Was this an independent invention,
or an unpaid adaptation of Dagron's work -- or might it
have been that Dagron hinself sold his technology to the
Confederates? If this were so, it would go far to explain
why Dagron suddenly appeared in 1871 to boldly offer his
microfilm services to the tottering French government.)))
(((Concerning balloons.)))
page 37:
"Professor Thaddeus Lowe believed strongly in the
military value of hot air balloons. On June 18, 1861, he
conducted a hot air balloon experiment for President
Lincoln. He ascended about Washington, D.C., in a balloon
with a telegraphic keying device on board and the
telegraphic wire hanging out of the balloon to a ground
station. He succeeded that day in transmitting the first
air-to-ground telegraphic communication. (...) (((See
Dead Media Working Note 02.6.)))
"Professor Lowe is also credited with taking the
first aerial photograph, again from one of his balloons.
(((It was my understanding that this distinction belongs
to the French aeronaut and photographer 'Nadar' --
bruces)))
"These successes so impressed Lincoln as to the
potential of the balloons that he made Professor Lowe the
head of the Union Balloon Corps. (((It would be gratifying
to know if the Balloon Corps had its own uniform and
official insignia.))) The Union found that while the
balloons did give the scouts a real advantage, not only
were they regularly shot down (as they ascended or
descended) but the balloons tended to spin in the air,
making the scout on board very sick. The Union Balloon
Corps was officially disbanded in May of 1863.
"The Confederacy, while envious of the Union efforts
in the area of ballooning, made only one balloon attempt
in the entire war. That effort is best described in the
words of General James Longstreet:
'While we were longing for the balloons that poverty
denied us, a genius arose... and suggested we.... gather
silk dresses and make a balloon. It was done, and we soon
had a great patchwork ship.... One day it was on a
steamer down on the James River, when the tide went out
and left the vessel and balloon high and dry on a bar.
The Federals gathered it in, and with it the last silk
dresses in the Confederacy.'"
Dead
Media | 0.01-02.0 | 02.1-04.0
| 04.1-06.0 | 06.1-08.0 |
08.1-10.0 | 10.1-12.0 |