Bertha believed passionately that an individual could indeed change the course of history and, for a brief shining moment, it seemed as if she actually might. In his book, Professor Dolmetsch describes a massive peace rally that Bertha staged in Vienna in 1898. She managed to secure Mark Twain as a speaker on this occasion, but the principal address was given by one Lt. Col. Manfred von Egidy, a Prussian officer who had been dismissed from the army for writing and circulating an antiwar pamphlet.

While drones have played an increasingly prominent role in America’s military and surveillance operations – at home and abroad – lesser known is the growing use of this new technology in civilian life. Some of these applications are far less sinister than one might expect. For Jason Lam, owner of San Francisco’s first personal drone shop, the aerial crafts could just be the latest and most exciting wave in the field of digital photography.