Model F automatic film camera

Laussedat was the pioneer of photography from the air; a technique that led to a flourishing branch of surveying compared to photography from the ground. His first aerial photography survey was made in 1858 using cameras attached to captive balloons and kites. However, it was not until the First World War that a rapid advance took place in this field, the cameras then being mounted on aeroplanes.

This object is an early automatic camera made for attachment to the side of an aircraft. The camera took a series of photographs automatically at regular intervals, the power for the mechanism involved being derived from the small airscrew rotated by the slipstream. A centrifugal governor limited the speed of the film. Photographs were taken vertically above the territory to be mapped or observed and superimposed on an edge of each small images of a compass, an aneroid barometer and a counter providing respectively a rough guide to the direction of flight, the height of the aircraft and the number of the picture in the series.

The camera was used in 1915 for map-making in the Middle East.