Jules Verne and his inspiration

**edyzmedieval** · 03-29-2006, 20:18

Since I read Valhalla Rising(by Clive Cussler

), it resparked an old question for me.

How did Jules Verne anticipate in his books the submarine? It's really a mistery.
Maybe he really did have a friend who really built one. Who knows...

Any thoughts?

**Geezer57** · 03-30-2006, 01:43

Well, Jules Verne published Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea in 1870 (in French - it was first translated into English in 1872). This was well after the American Civil War, during which the first sinking of a ship by a submarine occurred. For more info on this incident (Feb. 17, 1864 - The Confederate H.L. Hunley sank the USS Housatonic) see here: http://www.hunley.org/

Prior to that, the first attack (unsucessful) on a warship by a submarine happened during the night of Sept. 6/7, 1776, when the American submarine Turtle was launched against the British HMS Eagle, a 64 gun warship moored in New York harbor off of the island now occupied by the Statue of Liberty.

The first published prescription for a submarine was done by William Bourne, an Englishman, in 1580. There's lots more submarine history here: http://www.submarine-history.com/

While Verne was a fine writer and undoubtely a pioneering Science Fiction author (See Around the World in 80 Days, From the Earth to the Moon, Journey to the Center of the Earth, The Mysterious Island, etc. in addition to Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea), he wasn't the first to envision the submarine - he did romanticize and popularize it in widely distributed fiction.

**Sarmatian** · 03-30-2006, 02:42

Very nice explanation.
But he did "predict" that electricity could be used to power up great power-consuming systems. In his novel, captain Nemo used electricity to power the submarine, if I am not mistaken. He lived in the age of steam power. It was rather visionary of him. Much more than the submarine, I think.

**Geezer57** · 03-30-2006, 03:14

Originally Posted by Sarmatian

Very nice explanation.
But he did "predict" that electricity could be used to power up great power-consuming systems. In his novel, captain Nemo used electricity to power the submarine, if I am not mistaken. He lived in the age of steam power. It was rather visionary of him. Much more than the submarine, I think.

I don't want to take anything away from Verne, because I admire the man and recommend his work to anyone even remotely interested. But Faraday was experimenting with the first electric motors in the 1830's (http://inventors.about.com/library/i.../blfaraday.htm) and other pioneers in the field date back even earlier to the early 1700's (http://www.code-electrical.com/histo...ectricity.html). So a well-read writer in the 1860's/1870's researching background for a new Science-Fiction novel would surely be familiar with these works, and would logically incorporate his speculations about them in his book. As far as I know, Verne is the first to posit electrical propulsion for submarines, I'm guessing a novel concept at the time. So you have a good point, but I'd rather say that Verne lived in a transition period from steam to electric power (1828-1905).