A short history of the warfare tactic that crushes cities but not morale: or, a study in the paradoxes of technological dystopianism.
The first time a city was bombed from the air was in 1849, some fifty years before the Wright brothers made their pioneering flight on a North Carolina beach. Forces from the Austrian Empire were besieging Venice, at that time seeking to liberate itself from Austrian rule. The Austrians attached explosives to unmanned balloons and released them. After a certain interval the bombs were to drop on the city. Their attempt failed: the bombs did little damage, with some even landing on friendly troops. But the attack showed how aerial bombing altered the calculus of warfare, because it could embroil civilian populations even if they were far behind the front lines. As a onetime U.S. consul to Venice wrote, flying ordnance had become a threat to a place that its doges had “so fondly, yet so mistakenly, believed unassailable externally by any mortal foe!”