The 2021 New England Journal of Photographic History, #179, contains two fascinating articles. The first details the development of an engineering marvel, the camera used in the once highly classified Hexagon spy satellite program. Author Philip Pressel describes how he and his team designed and built the powerful satellite camera that was used to keep an eye on our “enemies” during the 1970s and early 1980s. The article also contains an array of satellite images of the Soviet Union and North Korea taken during the Cold War period.

The Journal also includes an article by Lee McIntyre and Chris Culy about Miss C. Smith, a woman photographer who left her job working in the textile mills of New England, opened her first photographic studio in 1877 at age 48, and enjoyed a very successful career in studio photography for the next 29 years. The article touches on the careers of other 19th century New England women photographers and includes many samples of Miss Smith’s fine studio work.

Specs: Standard 8.25″ x 10.75″ 42 pages  Perfect-bound © 2021

Published by: PHSNE – The Photographic Historical Society of New England, Inc.

---

2021 PHSNE Journal – Supplemental Material

The Hexagon KH-9 Spy Satellite. The Challenge of Designing, Constructing, and Operating a Spy Satellite Camera, by Philip Pressel

Philip Pressel is a story himself. A Holocaust survivor sheltered in France and Belgium before coming to the United States in 1946, he attended New York’s prestigious Stuyvesant High School, graduated with honors from NYU as a mechanical engineer, with additional education at the University of Pennsylvania. He ended up spending 30 years at Danbury, CT-based Perkin-Elmer as a key project engineer on the KH-9 Hexagon reconnaissance “spy” satellite.

Somewhere along the way he received a group of photographs of historical value during the lead-up to the Normandy invasion, plus unique portraits of senior British officers , including Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery, General Sir Miles Dempsey, and King George VI. Download Photographs from Philip Pressel’s scrapbook here.

---