Jules Verne
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Jules Verne: The Man 100 Years Ahead of His Time
Over 110,000 passengers board the Walt Disney World monorails each day(Rafferty, Gordon 117), approximately 5.5 million light bulbs are sold every day in the U.S.(generalelectric.com), and there are about 10 million certified scuba divers in the U.S. (cayman.com) What does this have to do with Jules Verne? He described these things in his books–books that he wrote 150 years ago. Jules Verne had an imagination and a vision for the future unrivaled by anyone of his time. This paper will elucidate many of those descriptions.
Jules Verne was born on February 8, 1828, in Nantes, France. His father was a lawyer, and due to the lack of clients in Nantes, the Verne family moved to Paris. It was there that Jules was introduced to several literary circles. He soon wrote his first two plays: The Broken Straws and Leonard De Vinci, the first performed when Jules was 22; the second in 1995 after a a safe was opened containing several unpublished works of Jules Verne.
Jules Verne wrote his first two books in 1863. The first of these was called Five Weeks in a Balloon. When held up to Vernes later works such as 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, which contains a large amount of descriptions of the future, Five Weeks in a Balloon seems lacking, but it does contain one prediction. Several years after the book was published the first long-distance journey in a hot-air balloon was made.
The second of the two books Verne wrote in 1863 was not published- and was not even discovered until 1995. This book, entitled Paris in the Twentieth Century, contains many predictions. Verne describes elevated monorails, elevators, automobiles, fax machines, the internet, and even video chat. This book follows the rather uneventful life of Michel Dufrenoy through his daily activities in the the future–the 1960s. The book in general is very similar to George Orwells 1984 or Aldous Huxleys Brave New World in its predictions of a society run by technology and business. Paris in the Twentieth Century was written long before either Orwell or Huxley wrote their similar works, yet Vernes predictions are the closest to reality.
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea begins with a mystery. For over a year, ocean-going vessels had reported running into a floating island or a sunken ship or being rammed by a giant whale. Pierre Aronnax, a professor at the Paris Museum of Natural History, develops a theory to explain these sightings. He thinks that a huge narwhal is attacking these ships. After a passenger ship encounters this “creature,” the United States sends out a frigate, the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, to hunt and kill the narwhal. Because of his theory, Aronnax is invited to join the expedition along with his servant. After a long search, the Abraham Lincoln collides with the beast off the coast of Japan. Aronnax is thrown overboard and grabs hold of the monsters back to keep from drowning, only to discover it is made of metal. He has no idea what to think, because submarines had not been invented yet. Eventually, the captain, Nemo, lets him aboard the submarine, The Nautilus. In the submarine Aronnax is introduced to dozens of new things. He learns that the submarine is
powered entirely by electric engines, which was unheard of at the time. He sees the crew leave the Nautilus wearing skin tight diving suits with a device that enables them to stay underwater for long periods of time. At the point in time the book was