From the Earth to the Moon
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Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 Next page Kentucky, Virginia, and Indiana, and, after quitting the Washington station, re-entered Baltimore, where for four days one would have thought that the United States of America were seated at one immense banquet, saluting them simultaneously with the same hurrahs! The apotheosis was worthy of these three heroes whom fable would have placed in the rank of demigods. And now will this attempt, unprecedented in the annals of travels, lead to any practical result? Will direct communication with the moon ever be established? Will they ever lay the foundation of a traveling service through the solar world? Will they go from one planet to another, from Jupiter to Mercury, and after awhile from one star to another, from the Polar to Sirius? Will this means of locomotion allow us to visit those suns which swarm in the firmament? To such questions no answer can be given. But knowing the bold ingenuity of the Anglo-Saxon race, no one would be astonished if the Americans seek to make some use of President Barbicane's attempt. Thus, some time after the return of the travelers, the public received with marked favor the announcement of a company, limited, with a capital of a hundred million of dollars, divided into a hundred thousand shares of a thousand dollars each, under the name of the "National Company of Interstellary Communication." President, Barbicane; vice-president, Captain Nicholl; secretary, J. T. Maston; director of movements, Michel Ardan. And as it is part of the American temperament to foresee everything in business, even failure, the Honorable Harry Trolloppe, judge commissioner, and Francis Drayton, magistrate, were nominated beforehand! End of Project Gutenberg etext of "From the Earth to the Moon" and the sequel "Round the Moon" published as one Etext. ******* Notes: Jules Verne's "From the Earth to the Moon" and "A Trip Around It" > >I originally intended to "correct" some of the numbers in the book. >For example, page 207 has "thirteenth" where "thirtieth" would be >more appropriate. Some of the densities and volumes and masses don't >match up. The business with the wrong exhaust velocity of the gun >is also a bit confusing. The dates and times aren't quite consistent >throughout, although they are close enough that Verne must have been >working from a time-line. For example, I think he has the time for >the fall back to earth exactly matching the time for the trip out. >There are also inconsistent spellings, for example "aluminum" and >"aluminium". Some of these annoyed me, in the sense of disturbing >my reading; since the reader is reading for pleasure, the annoyance >should be removed. All cases of the British? spelling of aluminium have been changed to the American spelling aluminum. >I decided that the correction project was going to be a lot of trouble, >and might be a perversion of the original work. I concentrated instead >on producing an accurate rendition of the text. However, if a French >speaker can find a French edition, it might be nice to see if the >translators introduced errors. The measurements seem to have been >converted from metric without regard for significant figures. Occasional >conversions are simply omitted, with "feet" inserted for "meters" without >fixing the numbers. These might be safely recomputed without doing >violence to the spirit of the original work. Whether one should >standardize the spelling of "aluminium" I don't know. "Aluminium" >has a certain charm. I don't know what American or English usage was >at the time. We might consider converting all the temperatures to >Fahrenheit. I suggest removing the page numbers, undoing all the >hyphenation, and repackaging the lines at a length of (up to) 72 >characters, >with only occasional word breaks. Page #s and a full reformating has been done. Line widow/orphans have been painstakingly removed. Hypenated words at the end of lines have been eliminated to the best of my judgement. >I think a table of units should be offered for the reader. >myriameter = 10 km >fathom = 6 feet; league ~ 3 miles, but don't know French usage in 1865. >page 125 has perigee 86,410 leagues (French), or 238,833 miles >Would be nice to know the currency conversions of the day. > >We may criticize Verne for his errors, but the remarkable thing is >how much he got right! I think this was the first engineering proposal >for space travel, using physics instead of magic. Verne deserves much >of the credit for inspiring the early rocket pioneers, and ultimately >today's space program. As "literary" history, I note that Heinlein's >"The Man Who Sold the Moon" borrows from it. > > > > I have changed the one case of perihelium to the correct perihelion. > am sure they would have missed the moon by a lot.] Dates were not fixed. > This only occurs twice in the book, so both are left in. > `yle' ending was accepted by undisputed "majority rule" > The former accepted. > ><30th degree of lunar latitude instead of 13th?> > Numbers, units, dates, times and math errors have NOT been changed. >Typographic conventions in the book: >The book uses ligatures for ff fi fl ffi ffl; I have simply spelled these >out. >Chapter N is in italics. >The chapter titles are in small caps. >The first word of each chapter has an oversize capital, >and the rest of the word is in small caps. If the first >word is two letters or less, the second word is also in >small caps. >AM and PM are always in small caps, as A.M. or P.M. All these have been changed to PG standards. >My typographic conventions: >There are a few lines longer than 80 character, usually because I have >inserted a {sic phrase} in the line. I am using % as a line-break >character >in these cases; the % and the following new-line should be deleted. >{correction} I have indicated some candidates for correction in braces. All these were appreciated! and either corrected or ignored. >_italics_ are marked with underbars These are left in for the next proofer to turn into CAPS for PG. >#SMALL CAPS# are enclosed in hash-marks >$ae $'e dollar-sign preceeds ligatures and accented characters. > The accent follows the $ and precedes the letter. I've tried to get > ' and ` (as accents) right. > I have used : as an accent marker for umlaut. All are removed. >^2 means superscript 2. circumflex also occurs as an accent marker. >I've used ` and ' to enclose (recursive) quotes. Ascii has no provision >for distinguishable open and close doublequotes. >The book uses ligatures for ff fi fl ffi ffl; I have simply spelled these >out. >-- moderate dash and---- long dash I have added surrounding spaces. >I also switched to double space between sentences. >@ degree sign >L for British Pound. All these conventions (except the circumflex) have been accepted. > Removed (only one case) and probably a printers error? > |
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