Airopaidia: Containing the Narrative of a Balloon Excursion from Chester, the Eighth of September, 1785, Taken from Minutes Made During the Voyage; Hints on the Improvement of Balloons ... to Which Is Subjoined, Mensuration of Heights by the Barometer, Made Plain; With Extensive Tables. the Whole Serving as an Introduction to Aërial Navigation.

In September 1785, Thomas Baldwin convinced the famous balloonist Lunardi to lend him his balloon for a day. What he produced was the first book in history to contain illustrations depicting the world as seen from inside a balloon and the first to show that distinctive quilt-like pattern of fields and roads we now associate with aerial photography. Baldwin's narrative captures a singular moment when humanity had just learned to fly and was still trembling with the wonder of it. His prose oscillates between meticulous meteorological record-keeping and something approaching religious awe as he describes the earth shrinking beneath him, clouds enveloping his craft, and the town of Chester appearing as a cosmographic vision at the center of a sphere. The plates range from the balloon as a speck in an expansive landscape to the vertiginous overhead view that transformed how we picture our world from above. Part scientific manual, part breathless travelogue, this book reads like the journal of an early astronaut exploring an entirely new realm.