Monday, November 28, 2011

First Skywriting Ever

The first public exhibition of skywriting in America was made on this date in 1922.  It had been developed in Britain during WWI by a handful of RAF pilots.  On this occasion in November 1922, they had traveled to New York City to write "HELLO USA CALL VANDERBILT 7200" above Times Square.

Why that?  What did that mean? 

Well, one of the RAF pilots, John Savage, remained on the ground with the president of the American Tobacco Company, George Hill, while another RAF pilot, Cyrill Turner, wrote the message to demonstrate to Hill the power of advertising in this way.  And "VANDERBILT 7200" was the phone number of the hotel at which Hill was staying.  The hotel fielded 47,000 calls.

1 comment:

  1. Interesting! Skywriting is used also for romantic messages: proposals and more. My favorite indie artist, Nikki Forova, has a song called "Skywriter" - it's absolutely state of the art beautiful. ..
    You feel like you are in sky at first with Skywriter and then on the ground watching him paint those hearts.... If you want to hear it, find it here: http://soundcloud.com/nikkiforova/skywriter
    and here is Nikki's website if you wanna connect or get the song: www.nikkiforova.com - Music Tab.

    Sincerely,
    Natasha Graph

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