I read Andrew S. Bledsoe's essay, “Technology and War.” Summarizing the role of technology, Bledsoe writes, “For all the societal upheaval wrought by the Civil War, technological development provides some of the most tangible evidence of these sweeping changes…These technologies harnessed the science of the industrial, transportation, and market revolutions, coupling them with the supreme warmaking efforts of the Union and the Confederacy; the results brought wholesale destructions and a nation permanently altered.” (pg. 540) Bledsoe continues, “Yet for all these advances, the Civil War remained firmly rooted in older methods and technologies, and both the Union and Confederate armies were sometimes slow to adapt to new realities.” (pg. 540) Linking the use of artillery at the same time he describes the historiography of Civil War ballooning, Bledsoe writes, "Artillerists or army commanders eager for a better view of enemy positions could turn to the first American military aeronauts. Professor Thaddeus S.C. Lowe famously established the tiny Union Army Balloon Corps with a fleet of seven gas-filled balloons equipped with telegraphy machines, and served the Army of the Potomac from 1861 to 1863. Confederates likewise attempted to create an effective balloon fleet of their own, with little success. F. Stansbury Haydon’s Military Ballooning during the Early Civil War (1941) is the standard early work on aeronautics during the Civil War, while Charles M. Evans’s The War of the Aeronauts: A History of Ballooning during the Civil War (2002) is a lively and readable account." (pg. 550-551) This demonstrates the relative lack of academic attention to Civil War ballooning. ( )