Pigeon photography Pigeon photography is an aerial photography technique invented in 1907 by the German apothecary Julius Neubronner , who also used pigeons to deliver medications . A homing pigeon was fitted with an aluminium breast harness to which a lightweight time - delayed miniature camera could be attached . Neubronner ' s German patent application was initially rejected , but was granted in December 1908 after he produced authenticated photographs taken by his pigeons . He publicized the technique at the 1909 Dresden International Photographic Exhibition , and sold some images as postcards at the Frankfurt International Aviation Exhibition and at the 1910 and 1911 Paris Air Shows . Initially , the military potential of pigeon photography for aerial reconnaissance appeared attractive . Battlefield tests in the First World War provided encouraging results , but the ancillary technology of mobile dovecote s for messenger pigeons had the greatest impact . Owing to the rapid perfection of aviation during the war , military interest in pigeon photography faded and Neubronner abandoned his experiments . The idea was briefly resurrected in the 1930s by a Swiss clockmaker , and reportedly also by the German and French militaries . Although war pigeon s were deployed extensively during the Second World War , it is unclear to what extent , if any , birds were involved in aerial reconnaissance . The United States Central Intelligence Agency ( CIA ) later developed a battery - powered camera designed for espionage pigeon photography ; details of its use remain classified . The construction of sufficiently small and light cameras with a timer mechanism , and the training and handling of the birds to carry the necessary loads , presented major challenges , as did the limited control over the pigeons ' position , orientation and speed when the photographs were being taken . In 2004 , the British Broadcasting Corporation ( BBC ) used miniature television cameras attached to falcons and goshawk s to obtain live footage , and today some researchers , enthusiasts and artists similarly deploy crittercam s with various species of animals . Origins . The first aerial photographs were taken in 1858 by the balloonist Nadar ; in 1860 James Wallace Black took the oldest surviving aerial photographs , also from a balloon . As photographic techniques made further progress , at the end of the 19th century some pioneers placed cameras in unmanned flying objects . In the 1880s , Arthur Batut experimented with kite aerial photography . Many others followed him , and high - quality photographs of Boston taken with this method by William Abner Eddy in 1896 became famous . Amedee Denisse equipped a rocket with a camera and a parachute in 1888 , and Alfred Nobel also used rocket photography in 1897 . Homing pigeon s were used extensively in the 19th and early 20th centuries , both for civil pigeon post and as war pigeon s . In the Franco - Prussian War of 1870 , the famous pigeon post of Paris carried up to 50 , 000 microfilmed telegrams per pigeon flight from Tours into the besieged capital . Altogether 150 , 000 individual private telegrams and state dispatches were delivered . In an 1889 experiment of the Imperial Russia n Technical Society at Saint Petersburg , the chief of the Russian balloon corps took aerial photographs from a balloon and sent the developed collodion film negatives to the ground by pigeon post . Julius Neubronner . In 1903 Julius Neubronner , an apothecary in the German town of Kronberg near Frankfurt , resumed a practice begun by his father half a century earlier and received prescriptions from a sanatorium in nearby Falkenstein via pigeon post . ( The pigeon post was discontinued after three years when the sanatorium was closed . ) He delivered urgent medications up to by the same method , and positioned some of his pigeons with his wholesaler in Frankfurt to profit from faster deliveries himself . When one of his pigeons lost its orientation in fog and mysteriously arrived , well - fed , four weeks late , Neubronner was inspired with the playful idea of equipping his pigeons with automatic cameras to trace their paths . This thought led him to merge his two hobbies into a new " double sport " combining carrier pigeon fancying with amateur photography . ( Neubronner later learned that his pigeon had been in the custody of a restaurant chef in Wiesbaden . ) After successfully testing a Ticka watch camera on a train and while riding a sled , Neubronner began the development of a light miniature camera that could be fitted to a pigeon ' s breast by means of a harness and an aluminum cuirass . Using wooden camera models weighing , the pigeons were carefully trained for their load . To take an aerial photograph , Neubronner carried a pigeon to a location up to about from its home , where it was equipped with a camera and released . The bird , keen to be relieved of its burden , would typically fly home on a direct route , at a height of . A pneumatic system in the camera controlled the time delay before a photograph was taken . To accommodate the burdened pigeon , the dovecote had a spacious , elastic landing board and a large entry hole . According to Neubronner , there were a dozen different models of his camera . In 1907 he had sufficient success to apply for a patent . Initially his invention " Method of and Means for Taking Photographs of Landscapes from Above " was rejected by the German patent office as impossible , but after presentation of authenticated photographs the patent was granted in December 1908 . ( The rejection was based on a misconception about the carrying capacity of domestic pigeons . ) The technology became widely known through Neubronner ' s participation in the 1909 International Photographic Exhibition in Dresden and the 1909 International Aviation Exhibition in Frankfurt . Spectators in Dresden could watch the arrival of the pigeons , and the aerial photographs they brought back were turned into postcards . Neubronner ' s photographs won prizes in Dresden as well as at the 1910 and 1911 Paris Air Shows . A photograph of Schlosshotel Kronberg ( then called " Schloss Friedrichshof " after its owner Kaiserin Friedrich ) became famous due to its accidental inclusion of the photographer ' s wing tips . In a breach of copyright it was shown in German cinemas as part of the weekly newsreel in 1929 . In a short book published in 1909 Neubronner described five camera models : In a 1920 pamphlet , Neubronner described his last model as weighing slightly more than and being capable of taking 12 exposures . In 2007 , a researcher remarked that only little technical information is available about lenses , shutters and the speed of the photographic media , but reported that Neubronner obtained the film for his panoramic camera from ADOX . For this camera he estimated a film speed of ISO 25 / 15° – 40 / 17° and a shutter speed of 1 / 60 s – 1 / 100 s . The film was cut to the format 30 mm × 60 mm and bent into a concave shape to prevent unnecessary distortion due to the half - circle movement of the lens . In 1920 Neubronner found that ten years of hard work and considerable expenses had been rewarded only with his inclusion in encyclopedias and the satisfaction that an ancillary technology , the mobile dovecote ( described below ) , had proved its worth in the war . Neubronner ' s panoramic camera is displayed at the German Museum of Technology in Berlin and the Deutsches Museum in Munich . First World War . Neubronner ' s invention was at least partially motivated by the prospect of military applications . At the time photographic aerial reconnaissance was possible but cumbersome , as it involved balloons , kite s or rocket s . The Wright brothers ' successful flight in 1903 presented new possibilities , and surveillance aircraft were introduced and perfected during the First World War . But pigeon - based photography , despite its practical difficulties , promised to deliver complementary , detailed photographs taken from a lower height . The Prussian War Ministry was interested , but some initial skepticism could only be overcome through a series of successful demonstrations . The pigeons proved relatively indifferent to explosions , but during battle a dovecote may need to be moved , and pigeons can take some time to orient to their new position . The problem of making carrier pigeons accept a displaced dovecote with only a minimum of retraining had been tackled with some success by the Italian army around 1880 ; the French artillery captain Reynaud solved it by raising the pigeons in an itinerant dovecote . There is no indication that Neubronner was aware of this work , but he knew there must be a solution as he had heard of an itinerant fairground worker who was also a pigeon fancier with a dovecote in his trailer . At the 1909 exhibitions in Dresden and Frankfurt he presented a small carriage that combined a darkroom with a mobile dovecote in flashy colors . In months of laborious work he trained young pigeons to return to the dovecote even after it was displaced . In 1912 Neubronner completed his task ( set in 1909 ) of photographing the waterworks at Tegel using only his mobile dovecote . Almost 10 years of negotiations were scheduled to end in August 1914 with a practical test at a maneuver in Strasbourg , followed by the state ' s acquisition of the invention . These plans were thwarted by the outbreak of the war . Neubronner had to provide all his pigeons and equipment to the military , which tested them in the battlefield with satisfactory results , but did not employ the technique more widely . Instead , under the novel conditions of attrition warfare , war pigeons in their traditional role as pigeon post saw a renaissance . Neubronner ' s mobile dovecote found its way to the Battle of Verdun , where it proved so advantageous that similar facilities were used on a larger scale in the Battle of the Somme . After the war , the War Ministry responded to Neubronner ' s inquiry to the effect that the use of pigeons in aerial photography had no military value and further experiments were not justified . The International Spy Museum in Washington D . C . has a small room dedicated to carrier pigeons and pigeon photography in the First World War . Second World War . Despite the War Ministry ' s position immediately after the First World War , in 1932 it was reported that the German army was training pigeons for photography , and that the German pigeon cameras were capable of 200 exposures per flight . In the same year , the French claimed that they had developed film cameras for pigeons as well as a method for having the birds released behind enemy lines by trained dogs . Although war pigeon s and mobile dovecotes were used extensively during the Second World War , it is unclear to what extent , if any , they were employed for aerial photography . According to a report in 1942 , the Russian army discovered abandoned German trucks with pigeon cameras that could take photos in five - minute intervals , as well as dogs trained to carry pigeons in baskets . On the allied side , as late as 1943 it was reported that the American Signal Corps was aware of the possibility of adopting the technique . It is certain , however , that during the Second World War pigeon photography was introduced into German nurseries in toy form . From around 1935 the toy figures produced under the brand " Elastolin " , some of which show motifs from before 1918 with updated uniforms , began to include a signal corps soldier with a pigeon transport dog . The figurine represents a soldier in the act of releasing a pigeon that carries an oversized pigeon camera . Thanks to research conducted by the " Musée suisse de l ' appareil photographique " at Vevey , much more is known about the pigeon cameras developed at about the same time by the Swiss clockmaker Christian Adrian Michel ( 1912 – 1980 ) in Walde . He was assigned to the Swiss Army ' s carrier pigeons service in 1931 , and in 1933 he began work on adapting Neubronner ' s panoramic camera to 16 mm film , and improving it with a mechanism to control the delay before the first exposure and to transport the film between exposures . Michel ' s camera , patented in 1937 , weighed only , and may have been one of the first to have a timer operated by clockwork . Michel ' s plan to sell his camera to the Swiss Army failed , as he was unable to find a manufacturer to produce it in quantity ; only about 100 of his cameras were constructed . After the outbreak of the Second World War Michel patented a shell and harness for the transport of items such as film rolls by carrier pigeon . Between 2002 and 2007 three of his cameras were auctioned by Christie ' s in London . The " Musée suisse de l ' appareil photographique " at Vevey holds around 1 , 000 photographs taken for test purposes during the development of Michel ' s camera . Most of the photos were taken with 16 mm orthopanchromatic Agfa film with a speed of ISO 8 / 10° . The exposed format was 10 mm × 34 mm . The quality was sufficient for a tenfold magnification . In the catalog of the 2007 exhibition " Des pigeons photographes ? " they are classified as test photos on the ground or from a window , human perspectives from the ground or from elevated points , aeroplane - based aerial photographs , aerial photographs of relatively high altitude that were probably taken by pigeons released from a plane , and only a small number of typical pigeon photographs . After the Second World War . The United States Central Intelligence Agency ( CIA ) developed a battery - powered pigeon camera now on display in the CIA Museum ' s virtual tour . According to the website , the details of the camera ' s use are still classified . News reports suggest that the camera was used in the 1970s , that the pigeons were released from planes , and that it was a failure . In 1978 the Swiss magazine " L ' Illustré " printed an aerial photograph of a street in Basel , taken by a pigeon of Febo de Vries - Baumann equipped with a camera with a hydraulic mechanism . In 2002 – 03 the performance artist and pigeon fancier Amos Latteier experimented with pigeon photography using Advanced Photo System ( APS ) and digital cameras and turned the results into " PowerPointillist " lecture performances in Portland , Oregon . In a 2008 film adaptation of Sleeping Beauty by the German director Arend Agthe , the prince invents pigeon photography and discovers Sleeping Beauty on a photo taken by a pigeon . In the 1980s a small number of high - quality replica Doppel - Sport cameras were made by Rolf Oberländer . One was acquired in 1999 by the Swiss Camera Museum in Vevey . Modern technology allows extension of the principle to video cameras . In the 2004 BBC program " Animal Camera " , Steve Leonard presented spectacular films taken by miniature television cameras attached to eagles , falcons and goshawks , transmitted to a nearby receiver by microwaves . The cameras have a weight of . Miniature digital audio players with built - in video cameras can also be attached to pigeons . In 2009 researchers made news when a peer - reviewed article discussed the insights they gained by attaching cameras to albatrosses . The lipstick - sized cameras took a photo every 30 seconds . Cameras have also been attached to other animals , such as cats and dogs .