From local surroundings to global phenomena, the Parisian sky as an indicator of technological and environmental change
Résumé
In their contribution to the series Making Europe, Per Högselius, Arne Kaijser and Erik van der Vleuten showed how Europe’s infrastructure transition changed Europe’s ecological systems. More particularly, they documented the relevance of the notion of a common sky above Europe, progressively constructed through appropriations and infrastructures “including telegraph lines, antennas, airfields, smokestacks, and bird protection areas [as well as] flying objects ranging from balloons and kites to aircraft and satellites”. This paper proposes to investigate this transformation encompassing the long Twentieth Century from a localized point of view by focusing on the observations and explorations of the Parisian sky. It shows how various interpretations of the sky succeeded to each other and intermingled from 1870 onwards when the sky offered an escape route from the city and was used for communication purposes through aerial post-office and homing pigeons.