Aerofilms Ltd was the UK's first commercial aerial photography company, founded in 1919 by Francis Wills and Claude Graham White.
[1] Wills had served as an Observer with the Royal Naval Air Service during World War I, and was the driving force behind the expansion of the company from an office and a bathroom (for developing films) in Hendon to a business with major contracts in Africa and Asia as well as in the UK.
In its earliest days, the main work of the company had been oblique photography, and the images were often sold to postcard manufacturers.
[4] In 1940, the company's staff and state-of-the-art equipment were co-opted into the war effort, forming the nucleus of the Allied Photographic Interpretation Unit at Medmenham.
Unlike other photographic libraries, a significant percentage of Aerofilms photos is already in the public domain, albeit protected by copyright.
The digitization project took 4 years with financial help from the Heritage Lottery Fund, The Foyle Foundation and other donors and now, over 95,000 images are available on the website.
[10][11] Photographs from the archive feature in the 2008 book British Seaside Piers by Richard Riding and Chris Mawson, former Aerofilms librarian.