By a stretch, Twenty
Thousand Leagues Under The Seas is Verne’s most famous and popular
book. Aside from the fact that the story
is action packed and timeless, the technical details are just as applicable
today as they were over one hundred years ago.
It’s obvious that Jules Verne was ahead of his time regarding
technology…
As a student of submersibles of the 18th and 19th
century (true submarines did not appear until the advent of the Type XXIII
U-boat employed by the Nazis in WWII), I find it interesting to ponder from
where Verne got his ideas. Which craft
inspired him? Could it be Robert
Fulton’s submarine? It was named
Nautilus, and was built by him in France at the turn of the 19th
century. Was it the French submersible Plongeur built in 1863. Was it the United States Navy’s first
submersible, the Alligator, built in
1862 and employed during the American Civil War? Alligator
was designed and built by a Frenchman…he was named De Villeroi, and Verne might
have known him and his work. It will
probably always remain a guessing game in regards to Verne’s real world
inspiration.
He was over 80 years ahead of his time in regards to the
submarine. He didn’t have a name for the
technology in the 1870’s, but Verne’s Nautilus
appears from the description in the book to have been an atomic submarine, powered
by an everlasting energy that we call nuclear fission. Little wonder that the World’s first nuclear
powered submarine carried the same name.
Coincidence? I think not…
The first American edition of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Seas, printed in 1873, is
available here: