Alternative Means Of Transportation

Ever since Pegasus, the winged horse, sprang from the pages of Hesiod's Theogeny (c. 700 BCE), humans have been looking for new ways of getting around. School children look at Leonardo da Vinci's drawings of imaginary flying machines with wonder.
Between bi-planes and a bevy of yellow parachutes, you might think that the skies over France were crowded a century ago, and so they were, even more in the imagination than in reality. The Montgolfier brothers had long since lofted their hot air balloons over the French countyside and during the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, balloons had come to the aid of Paris under siege.
Dirigibles turned out to be quite useful for mapping the terrain, but usefulness can't keep the imagination in check. Pegasus reappears to promote the Paris Opera and our old friend, the caricaturist known as SEM, promotes tourism with a friendly sea serpent and a mermaid - at least I think that's why she's topless.






Image credits:
1. Anonymous - Parachutes, early 20th century, Wolfonsian Museum, Miami, Florida.
2. Andre Devambez - Bi-Planes Fly Over the Eiffel Tower, 1910, Musee D'Orsay, Paris.
3. Anonymous - Dirigibles Surveying an Italian River Plain, early 20th century, Alinari Archive, Florence.
4. Jean-Gabriel Domergue - A l'Opera, Chacoin Gallery, Paris.
5. Georges Goursat (SEM) - Paradise Found, Draeger Publishers, Paris.