The Helium-Powered Ride That Changed Readers’ Perspective

Some of the earliest aerial photos ever taken in color were committed to gelatin-coated glass plates now held in the National Geographic archives. They include this sweeping shot of the Statue of Liberty, shown here on the back of an old plate rimmed with fraying labels. The scene was captured in 1930 by National Geographic magazine Assistant Editor (and future Editor in Chief) Melville Bell Grosvenor—a photo it would have been all but impossible to make without a bit of ingenuity and two groundbreaking technologies.

The first was known as the Finlay color process, a photography technique that exposed a glass-plate negative through a screen of colored filters. Unlike the color photo methods that came before, the Finlay process didn’t require long exposures and absolute stillness, which were impossible to achieve while cruising through the air, particularly aboard the jostling prop planes that then dominated the skies.

The other key innovation was one that allowed Grosvenor to avoid planes altogether. It was history’s only successfully flown metal-skinned airship, a 148-foot-long, helium-filled dirigible called ZMC-2, built and operated by the United States Navy. The ZMC-2 drifted slowly enough through the skies that Grosvenor figured he could take a photo from its cabin that didn’t blur from movement. And the Navy, eager to convince the public (and Congress) of the merits of its airship program, allowed the 28-year-old editor to hitch a ride.

On a brilliant June day, Grosvenor boarded the ZMC-2 at a naval air station in Lakehurst, New Jersey (the same spot where, seven years later, the German airliner Hindenburg would explode, bringing the airship era to an abrupt, harrowing end). In that year’s September issue, where this and other revelatory color aerials were first published, Grosvenor wrote that the ship rode thermals over the eastern seaboard “like an ocean liner in a heavy swell.” When the floating craft reached New York Harbor, its pilot waited for the skies to clear, then descended to 300 feet and cut the engines. Aboard, hovering in silence alongside Lady Liberty, the young photographer pressed his shutter and pushed the boundaries of possibility.