Digital Aerials

The 93 images in the Dallas Historic Aerial Photographs electronic collection represent a whole set of atmosphere pictures commissioned by the City of Dallas and photographed by Sherman Mills Fairchild in October of 1930 traveling out-of enjoy Field. SMU's Edwin J. Foscue Map Library keeps in its collections all but eight of the 93 photos plus a photograph picture associated with master grid map (on right). All pictures tend to be 19” x 23.5” prints.

Edwin J. Foscue Map Library digital selections are included in CUL Digital Collections, which contain huge number of digitized photographs, manuscripts, imprints, and pieces of art held by SMU's Central University Libraries special choices.

The Dallas Historic Aerial Photographs, 1930 Fairchild Survey complements the Dallas Aerial Photographs, 1945 USDA research and the Miscellaneous Aerial Views of Dallas, 1930s-1940s. A related electronic collection, White Rock Lake Aerial Photographs, 1927 Fairchild study, is available through the DeGolyer Library.

Aerial Survey Grid

To see someone high res image, click on the yellowish dot associated with the area of the chart you want to examine. Whenever you achieve this, you're going to be taken up to the internet page for the picture which contains a high quality aerial picture with yellow markers and a corresponding legend of places. Place-names tend to be displayed in secret underneath the image. To zoom in and maneuver around, use the device club across the the surface of the picture. The tiny picture left will say to you what the main photograph you may be viewing by displaying a shaded purple location round the percentage of the image you will be seeing.

Each picture also incorporates a web link towards unlabeled type of equivalent photo.

Concerning the Originals

The town of Dallas Municipal Archives maintains content negatives for many of these images. Dallas Archivist John Slate feels these copy downsides were produced in the late 1960s or early 1970s. They are not the original downsides from the 1930 aerial review. While a number of libraries house some or all of the 1930 prints, no known set of the initial downsides is present.

The Edwin J. Foscue Map Library worked with local historian George Cearley to produce identifications for longer than 3, 500 certain landmarks within these aerial photographs. These identifications can be found on the web as an overlay therefore the images and identifications are investigated not merely by zooming inside and out but also by offering unique tags that name and explain exactly what the audience is witnessing. This replicates the real overlays produced within the Edwin J. Foscue Map Library.

About Fairchild Aerial Studies

Aerial photography began within the nineteenth century from balloons. It expanded in the 1st World War (1914-18) whenever worth of army reconnaissance from airplanes became obvious. After the war, photography from environment came quickly to be used for multiple functions. As an example geological surveying, mapping, and, when it comes to photographing towns through the environment, tax assessment. As towns and cities broadened, it proved far faster and less expensive to help make the maps needed for taxation functions from pictures taken from airplanes than by old-fashioned surveying techniques on the floor.

Sherman Mills Fairchild (the son, incidentally, of a man whoever company in the course of time progressed into IBM) had been by 1919 a leader in design of cameras for aerial photography. In 1924 he founded Fairchild Aerial Surveys, Inc. The company’s very first agreement would be to produce a photo-map of Newark, nj-new jersey. Fairchild soon in addition began creating airplanes. His FC-2, first-made in 1927, had been a five-seat, high-wing monoplane. The type could possibly be, and frequently was, utilized for aerial photography. The Fairchild airplane business went out of business in 2002, although one of its items, the A10-A Thunderbird II (also referred to as the “Warthog”), a strong ground-support airplane, is still in-service because of the united states of america Air energy. (Contributed by Peter Bakewell, Aviation Historian, SMU).

Project Contributors

George Cearley (historic identifications), Sarah Roberts (metadata entry), John Slate (City of Dallas Archivist), Dawn Youngblood (curator), nCDS (digitization, metadata, website design).

Scholarly Reviewers: Peter Bakewell, John Chavez, Bonnie Jacobs, Ben Johnson, Darwin Payne.

Digital Collections Recommendations and Treatments

Products in Central University Library Digital Collections are digitized following the SMU Central University Libraries Digitization tips and Procedures. Digital choices are created under the tips of this CUL Digital Collections: Filenaming, Workflow, and Metadata instructions, or through specialized metadata profiles tailored for the collection.