Photography News Issue 30 absolutephoto.com
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ProMoviemaker Welcome to the drone age Drones have been around for more than 150 years, but their development as a vehicle for commercial photography and filming is much more recent. So where have they come from and where are they going?
Words by TerryHope
1849 Earliest recorded use of an unmanned aerial vehicle. 22 August, Austria attacked Italian city of Venice with unmanned balloons loaded with explosives. 1916 First pilotless aircraft built during First WorldWar. 12 September, the Flying Bomb, the Hewitt-Sperry Automatic Airplane made its first flight, demonstrating the concept of an unmanned aircraft, intended as ‘aerial torpedoes’ and early cruise missiles.
1980s NASA awarded Lockheed contract to study solar-powered HALEUAV for cropmonitoring, military reconnaissance and communications.
2006 DJI founded in Shenzhen, China.
1982 Israel used UAVs alongside their manned aircraft against Syrian aircraft during the LebanonWar.
2007 Online community DIYDrones founded by Chris Anderson, 3DR’s founder and CEO, in US. Now numbers 26,000members.
1940 Reginald Denny produced first large- scale production, purpose-built drone, Radioplane OQ-2. Almost 15,000 of them were manufactured during Second World War.
1960/70s Surveillance became widespread. US spied on North Vietnam, Communist China and North Korea using RyanModel 147 Lightning Bug series of drones.
1998 Insitu Aerosonde drone, Laima, became first UAV to cross the Atlantic Ocean in under 27 hours.
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