Pioneering aeronaut Thaddeus S.C. Lowe

When the war broke out, pioneering aeronaut Thaddeus S.C. Lowe cut short his experiments with hydrogen-filled balloons, which included meteorological explorationand a proposed transatlantic voyage, and volunteered his services to the Union. Eventually, he commanded a unit consisting of seven balloons inflated by hydrogen gas generators. In this photo, the balloon Intrepid is being inflated in order to make observations at the Battle of Fair Oaks during the Seven Days Battles in 1862. “The Civil War has been called the first modern war because a lot of new technology was being used in war for the first time,' Knauer notes. The balloons did not play a major strategic role in the war but helped usher in the age of aerial warfare