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Jules Verne is a French writer who worked at the end of the 19th century. His work became a classic of adventure literature and the beginning of such a genre as science fiction.
On the pages of books, Jules Verne wrote about events and technologies that were just beginning to be thought about in his time, not fully believing in the success of bold undertakings.
And now, one hundred and ten years after the death of the writer, we live in the future that he described. Jules Verne claimed that he only read a lot, studied discoveries and studies, and drew conclusions.
We have collected ten of the most incredible predictions that have come true.
10 Explosions of enormous power
In the novel The Flag of the Motherland, Jules Verne spoke about the inventor Tom Rock. He created an explosive mixture and poured it into a large vessel that reminds us of a rocket.
The “Filgurator of Doom”, as Tom called his invention, was launched into the sky and was supposed to detonate on impact with a target. A real rocket, and by the area of destruction you can talk about nuclear weapons!
According to the plot of the book, no one believes in the power of the figurator, and the authorities of no country have acquired it for themselves. Fast cruisers and submarines also appear in the book.
9. Giant cannons and chemical weapons
The work “Five Hundred Million Begums” appeared in 1879. In it, the author describes the struggle between Dr. Sarazen and Professor Schulze from Germany, who dreams of power over the world.
Schultz invented a long-range cannon that fires massive projectiles with poison gas inside over long distances.
Jules Verne wrote about the invention of chemical weapons many years before World War II when it was used.
In the “Flag of the Motherland” mentioned earlier, the description of the “Rock fulgurator” super-projectile became prophetic. An invention that can destroy any building at a distance of several kilometers resembles a nuclear bomb as a threat to all mankind.
8. The Trans-Siberian Railway
At one time, the idea of the Trans-Siberian Railway caused a lot of controversy. European engineers and politicians considered it pure adventure.
Jules Verne was inspired by a large-scale Russian project and created the work Claudius Bombarnac, in which he described the creation of the Trans-Asian Highway between Moscow and Beijing.
The author himself died in 1905, without seeing the completion of the construction of the railway in Russia.
7. Video communication, television and computers
Devices that receive wave signals and PCs are an integral part of modern life. In the days of Jules Verne, one could only dream of such a thing, which the writer did.
In his novel “Paris in the XNUMXth century” he describes the operation of the banking system and huge computers, the prototype of future computers.
In the same place, Jules Verne described a technology that made it possible to talk at a great distance, seeing the image of the interlocutor.
Jules Verne also returned to the topic of communication at a distance in the story “One Day in the Year of an American Journalist in 2889”, written together with his son. Thanks to the phonotelephot device, people communicated when miles of distance lay between them.
6. Electric chair
We have already mentioned the dystopia “Paris in the XNUMXth century”. In addition to computers, Jules Verne tells in it about the method of executing a person with the help of an electric current that is passed through the body.
And three decades after the creation of the novel in the United States, the electric chair for the execution of the death sentence was first used, and later became widely used in this country. In the homeland of Jules Verne, it was used extremely rarely.
5. Airplanes and helicopters
Man has always dreamed of conquering the sky. Even Leonardo da Vinci created various mechanisms that, in theory, were supposed to lift a person into the air. But only by the 20th century did these dreams get a chance to come true.
Inspired by magazine articles, Jules Verne created the novel Robur the Conqueror about a brilliant engineer who conquered the sky.
Later, in The Lord of the World, the writer spoke about a universal machine that could move on land, air and water.
Jules Verne also fantasized about a flying machine with a variable thrust vector and wrote about it in The Extraordinary Adventures of the Barsac Expedition. By the way, the author caught the invention of the Wright brothers and their first flight in 1903 and could see how the dream becomes a reality.
4. Aqualung
During the time of Jules Verne, diving suits had already been invented, but they were bulky and uncomfortable, had a whole list of shortcomings, and it was inconvenient to use them.
In the novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, the author described something new, reminiscent of modern scuba gear, light and comfortable. Perhaps it was this idea that Jacques-Yves Cousteau had in mind when he created the world’s first scuba gear.
3. fast submarines
Those who have read Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea will remember the magnetic figure of Captain Nemo and his legendary submarine, the Nautilus. When the novel was written, the British had already built a huge submarine.
Moreover, already in the 17th century, the engineer and physicist Cornelius Drebbel from Holland made structural drawings of a submarine for three officers. It was supposed to be set in motion by 12 rowers.
By the time work began on the novel, the Diver boat had been launched in France, and Jules Verne carefully collected information about it. But all the attempts of modern times faded before the author’s imagination: his Nautilus reached speeds of up to 50 knots, was comfortable for sailing long distances, the boat could dive to a depth of several kilometers.
In addition, she was so technologically advanced that Nemo managed to control her alone after losing the entire team. But Verne did not equip the Nautilus with an air supply, and Nemo surfaced on his boat to the surface every five days.
2. Fast travel around the world
In the work Around the World in 80 Days, Jules Verne tells how the main character, Phileas Fogg, bet that he would go around the Earth from west to east and keep within 80 days.
Could the writer suggest that now is the shortest time for which you can take a trip around the world – about 72 hours. But this is not the limit. The proof of this is that in 2010 a pilot from Switzerland set a record of 58 hours.
1. Flights into space and to the moon
In the works “From the Earth to the Moon” and “Around the Moon” the writer tells about the first journey of man to the satellite of our planet. For this, a shell car for 3 people is created. The shot occurred at the appointed hour, and for the first time earthlings went to the moon.
A striking coincidence and the embodiment of the author’s fantasy can be the flight of the Apollo 8 spacecraft, which flew around the moon in 1968. Even more surprisingly, the writer’s choice fell on Stones Hill, Florida, for the site from which the projectile was launched, which is not far from Cape Canaveral.
But the idea of a gun capable of sending a projectile to the moon was only partially used: in 1961, the United States and Canada began a joint HARP project, in which guns were developed to launch satellites into low orbit. But for a number of reasons, after a short time, the project was closed.