How Ballooning Changed Our Perspective of the Earth

Ballooning produced a new, and wholly unexpected, vision of the earth. It had been imagined that it would reveal the secrets of the heavens above, but in fact it showed the secrets of the world beneath. The early aeronauts suddenly saw the earth as a giant organism, mysteriously patterned and unfolding, like a living creature. For the first time the impact of man on nature was clearly revealed: the ever-expanding relationship of towns to countryside, roads to rivers, cultivated fields to forests, and the development of industry. It was comparable to the first views of the earth from space by the Apollo astronauts in the 1960s, producing a new concept of a ‘single blue planet’ with its delicate membrane of atmosphere. The famous photograph ‘Earthrise’ was taken from lunar orbit in December 1968.

Notes:

The same way the "Earthrise" photo changed our perspective, ballooning revealed the Earth to be a dynamic, interconnected organism.

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 The Age of Wonder
Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book:  Holmes , Richard (2010-03-02), The Age of Wonder, Vintage, Retrieved on 2012-01-02
  • Source Material [books.google.com]
  • Folksonomies: history enlightenment science