Julius Neubronner holds a camera and a pigeon (1914) Original Source Unknown, Wikimedia Commons.

The Birth of Aerial Photography: Cameras, Pigeons, and the Dovetailing of Two Vocations

Julius Neubronner (1852-1932), a German apothecary, engineer, inventor, amateur photographer, and cinematographic pioneer was also an avid pigeon keeper. He devised and patented the world’s first pigeon-camera in the early 19th century: an automated camera that could be fitted to his homing pigeons in order to take aerial photographs while the birds were in flight.