Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 88.djvu/59

Popular Science Monthly by elastic bands that pass over the back. The shutter opens automatically at prearranged intervals and the roll of film, which moves in unison with the shutter, can take thirty photographs one and a half inches square. This allows an almost continuous registry of the principal points of view during a flight of six miles. One of the engravings shows a view taken in flight by the pigeon photographer. The general staff of the German army heard of Dr. Neubronner's ingenious device and investigated its adaptability for topographic reconnaissance. The method was evidently found satisfactory, for since the present war broke out many pigeon photographers have been found back of the Allied lines either killed or stunned by the explosion of shells and firing of machine guns.

The history of carrier pigeons in war goes back to the earliest times. Pliny tells us that Decimus Brutus, one of the assassins of Caesar, used pigeons, when besieged by Antony at what is now Modena, to communicate with the Consul Hirtius who was coming to his aid. The crusaders are known to have used them at the siege of Hasar-near Aleppo, and the medieval Sultan Noureddin of Egypt is said to have established a pigeon-post with relays of pigeons. Among the noted instances of their use in modern times is the story that the London Rothschild knew of the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo, by means of carrierpigeons, ahead of the English government, to his great financial benefit on the Exchange. But then, this is only one of a dozen stories of the origin of the Rothschild fortune.