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"The idea I want to push next is that the United States should make Siberia a Protectorate. Pay the Russians off – a hundred, two hundred billion dollars – and simply run Siberia in an ecologically responsible way."
- Gregory Benford
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| Eagle With Camera | ||
| A live bald eagle equipped with a transmitting camera. |
| With more great flappings, Semper the eagle came to ground. He folded his huge wings and turned his head jerkily, his eyes unblinking. A tiny harness held a miniature camera against his chest...
As Huyghens reached his weapon, the eagle came back overhead. He went magnificently past, a hundred feet high, careening and flapping in the tricky currents. He screamed, abruptly, and circled and screamed again. Huyghens swung a tiny vision plate from its strap to where he could look into it. He saw, of course, what the little camera on Semper’s chest could see — reeling, swaying terrain as Semper saw it, though without his breadth of field. There were moving objects to be seen through the shifting trees. Their coloring was unmistakable. |
| From Exploration Team,
by Murray Leinster. Published by Astounding in 1956 Additional resources -
|
I'm not sure when this was first tried, but here's a brief video showing an eagle-cam in use:
A patent for the basic idea was applied for in 1907; German apothecary Julius Neubronner used pigeons to deliver medications. A homing pigeon was fitted with an aluminium breast harness to which a lightweight time-delayed miniature camera could be attached.
Compare to the Raytron Apparatus from Beyond the Stars (1928) by Ray Cummings.
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