The Final Frontier

Maybe it’s all the Cosmos I’ve been watching lately, but when it came time to do my essay on a photograph that changed the world, I didn’t look much father than space itself. The first image taken in space, to be specific. This image [below] was taken October 24, 1946 from an American-launched Nazi rocket and it was the first photograph to ever be taken in space.

The photo, which was taken of the Earth itself, is the culmination of the work of Clyde Holliday, who developed the camera and Freiherr von Braun, a defected Nazi scientist. What’s truly funny about this mission was that the photograph wasn’t really the point, it was more a byproduct, as the missions real objective had to do with cosmic rays. But when Holliday saw the reaction that the photograph caused, he rightly predicted that space photography was going to change the way we looked at the universe.

Taking the first photograph of space was no easy job either. The rigged 35mm camera was completely destroyed upon re-entry, but luckily Holliday had rigged the film with a steel casing that protected it from the brunt of the impact and allowed the photograph to be developed. The camera was rigged to go off every 1.5 seconds, so the scientists were left with many to choose from, but Holliday though this one was the winner because it was from the perspective of an astronaut coming home, which he thought would capture the most wonder and attention. 

According to the 19 year old recruit sent to retrieve the film, when the scientists found out that the film survived, they “started jumping up and down like kids” and later “went nuts” upon seeing it for the first time. Afterwards, Holliday became enthralled with the world [no pun intended] of space photography. He also played a rather large part in demanding respect for photography amongst scientists. One colleague of his noted "in an environment with super-Ph.D.s, and he wanted to make clear that photography was a science, too." 

The photograph, which was taken 65 miles above the surface of the Earth (anything above 62.5 miles being considered “space” and our closest attempt before was a mere 13.7 miles), captivated the American public and scientist community alike.

But how can I prove that this photograph had an impact on the world? Well, firstly the photographs were so popular that many other V2 rockets [above] were sent up to collect pictures. Over a thousand earth pics were collected between then and 1950, a relatively short span considering the bulk of images. Then, a mere 5 years after that we saw the start of the Space Race, the most productive era in American rocket science to date. Without this photograph, this grainy, boring photograph taken from a 35mm camera launched into space from White Sands, New Mexico, who knows if we would have reached the moon in 1969?

Thanks to Holliday and many other brave space photography pioneers, the cosmos are ready for their close up, as photos of space number in the millions today and there is a new attempt to reclaim pride in the scientific community (I’m talkin’ bout Cosmos. Can you dig it?)

Works Cited:

Diaz, J. (2012). This is the First Picture Ever Taken From Space- And It Was Taken

From a Nazi Rocket. Gizmodo. http://gizmodo.com/5955348/this-is-the

first-picture-ever-taken-from-spaceand-it-was-taken-from-a-nazi-rocket

Reichhardt, T. (2006). The First Photo From Space. Air & Space Magazine.

http://www.airspacemag.com/space/the-first-photo-from-space-13721411/