An Historic Aviation Photograph

A balloon belonging to John Steiner is made ready for an ascension in Erie, Pennsylvania, June 18, 1857. Steiner emigrated from Germany in 1853 and quickly established himself as a daring aeronaut - the picture shows the preparations for the flight that made him famous - the first attempt to fly to Canada across Lake Erie. Although flight conditions were unfavorable with high winds and an approaching storm, Steiner cast off. He later confessed to "... a dreary sense of loneliness" as he rose over Erie and watched "man and his numerous works...receding rapidly away." He recovered his spirits as a fair wind wafted him across Lake Erie and the cheers of the crews of ships he encountered floated up to him. But Steiner was soon engulfed by the storm - "Oh! What a scene was transpiring around me! ... Every moment the surrounding masses of clouds were illuminated by flashes of lighting, succeeded by terrible crashes of thunder, in the very midst of which I seemed to be floating, and my excited imagination led me to fancy that I would feel my frail car quiver at every shock." Almost within sight of Long Point, Ontario, the winds turned contrary and blew the balloon back across the lake towards Buffalo. Realizing that he would not reach the shore by nightfall, Steiner descended in the path of the steamer Mary Stewart. But the winds blew the balloon past the steamer. A boat's crew from the steamer finally caught Steiner's drag rope and found themselves towed at high speed by the runaway balloon. Steiner finally jumped and was picked up by Mary Stewart's crew. He returned to Buffalo, mourning the loss of his $500 dollar balloon - it was found much later, in tatters, having successfully made it to Canada without its pilot.

During the Civil War, Steiner served as a balloonist for the Union forces with Thaddeus S.C. Lowe's Balloon Corps. A civilian again, on August 19, 1863 Steiner gave a tethered balloon ride in St. Paul, Minnesota to a young German officer, Ferdinand von Zeppelin, on leave as a military observer with the Union army. Zeppelin marveled at the military potential for reconnaissance and artillery fire direction that the balloon afforded. Later, he would recall an idea for a new sort of balloon that Steiner had mentioned - a balloon with a long, thin shape and equipped with a rudder. No longer at the mercy of the winds like those that had blown him up and down Lake Erie in 1857, a balloonist would be able to sail where he liked - over enemy lines and back again. Years later, after Count Zeppelin's rigid airships had flown over the cities of Europe - both as weapons of war and as benign passenger-carrying ships, Zeppelin recalled his first flight: "While I was above St. Paul I had my first idea of my Zeppelins impressed upon me and it was there that the first idea of my Zeppelins came to me."

This image, a quarter-plate ambrotype made by an unknown photographer, is the earliest-known surviving photograph of an American flying machine. Thousands - millions of aviation photographs would follow, from the Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk in 1903 to snapshots at last week's air show. But this image, of people struggling to hold down a balloon on a stormy June day in Pennsylvania - is the very first.