Charles L. Pond
1874
Prof King's Mammoth Balloon "Buffalo" - Altitude 2,000 feet. From Buffalo to New Jersey, Five States traversed in 13 hours.
[Instantaneous Balloon View - Its Flight Among the Clouds]

Stereoview
Archive Farms
The Patrick Montgomery Collection, Object No. 2012.408
 
Professor King’s Mammoth Balloon “Buffalo,” photographed in flight in 1874, exemplifies the intertwining of spectacle, science, and visual culture in the nineteenth century. Balloon ascents had been popular entertainments since the late eighteenth century, but by the 1870s they had also become bound up with aspirations toward aerial navigation, meteorological study, and technological progress. King, one of the most prominent American aeronauts of his day, designed the “Buffalo” as a vast balloon whose scale and very name evoked both the city of Buffalo and the magnitude of American ambition. The ascent of such a balloon was not simply a feat of engineering but a theatrical performance witnessed by large crowds, reinforcing the aura of modernity and mastery over natural forces. Photographs of the “Buffalo” in flight helped to solidify these meanings, freezing in time the ephemeral moment of aerial elevation and giving it permanence as both evidence and spectacle. Within the wider history of aeronautics, and in relation to figures such as Thaddeus S.C. Lowe, King’s balloon imagery articulated a cultural desire to conquer the skies, and the photographic record amplified its resonance, situating ballooning at the intersection of technological daring, public imagination, and the documentary ambitions of photography.
 
LL/131168