This artist’s conception of skywriting appeared a hundred years ago this month, in the October 1922 issue of Science and Invention.

While this advertisement never appeared in the skies of New York, the magazine did report that London residents, startled by the sound of an airplane, found the words “Daily Mail” written in the sky.

The magazine reported that the plane’s exhaust was routed through a tank containing oils and chemicals to produce the writing, described as dense black smoke.

The term “skywriting” had apparently not yet been coined, and the magazine’s title for the article was simply “Airplane Writes Words in Smoke.”