Origins | PBS

How Spy Balloons Changed the Civil War | Origins

WKNO

Published January 6, 2025 at 4:00 AM CST

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Spy balloons once marked a great leap forward in the art of intelligence gathering. No longer were soldiers safe from enemy reconnaissance on the ground. They could now be watched from the air!

Balloons preceded drones and satellites, looming over battlefields in the French Revolution and the American Civil War. Join us in a time when an oddball inventor sent President Lincoln a decisive telegraph — from 500 feet above the ground.