This series comprises the original printing plates for 32 of the original 56 photographic illustrations in A. Roy Knabenshue, Compliments of Roy Knabenshue (Toledo, OH: Hadley Printing & Paper Co., [1907]), which documents the author's activities in ballooning and in the development of the dirigible in the period between 1903 and mid-1907. One additional plate is a larger version of a published image. The last plate is too damaged to identify; however, its measurements do not match those of any of the published images. The plates are mounted on wood blocks one inch thick.

The earliest photographs for which plates survive are of captive balloons at St. Louis in August 1903 and at the St. Louis World's Fair in October 1904. Additional surviving photographic plates show Knabenshue's airship Toledo No. 2 landing on the rooftop of the Spitzer Building in Toledo, OH, in June 1905; at the Ohio State Fair, Columbus, OH, in September 1906; and at the Brockton Fair, Brockton, MA, in October 1906. Other surviving photographic plates show Knabenshue demonstrating the maneuverability of one of his smaller dirigibles at White City amusement park, Toledo; Samuel A. King with the balloon "Orient", circa 1906; Knabenshue's "California Airship", constructed at Los Angeles in the winter of 1905-6; and his Passenger Airship I, built in 1906-7, and destroyed by fire at the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines in late August 1907.