SET THE PACE

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 118, 21 May 1930, Page 17

SET THE PACE

FOR MODERN SCIENCE

WONDERFUL JULES VERNE

PEOPHET OP PROGRESS

A few days ago I listened to a conversation in which several of the most illustrious of contemporary French scientists were engaged, says Andre Maurois. Tlioy were Jean Pen-in, who received the Nobel Prize a fow years ago for his work on atoms; his son, who is also an excellent physicist; the Duke do Broglie, Paul Painleve, mathematician and former Minister of War, and the groat biologist, Caullery. Somehow the question,arose as to the possibility of travelling from the earth to the moon. To my great surprise, one of tho company remarked: "I d/m't think I shall ever go to the moon, for lam too old. But certainly my son will —or will sue other men go there." "How?" I asked him. ■ "Oh," he replied, "there are several possible methods. The most practicable, I imagine, will be a rocket propelled by a series of explosions." "But if we can make the journey to the moon, how shall we breathe when we get there? Has an atmosphere sur- ■ ' rounding the moon be discovered?" '' No,'' was the answer, '' but we can take along a supply of oxygen. And when a small colony of immigrants from the earth is established upon the moon, the provision of oxygen will be- . come a public service, like the provision of food. Just as, the housekeeper goes to market every morning to buy your provision of fats and mineral salts, upon the moon she will purchase a supply of oxygon." But why would there be such a colony upon tho moon? Are there metals there, or other riches to be explored?" "Perhaps. But why do people go to all tho new countries? They go from curiosity, ..from a taste for adventure. Why did Lindbergh fly across the ocean?" . ; WILL BE SIMPLE. "That is not tho same thing. I understand Lindbergh. He knew that when he succeeded he would be a witness of his own success. But the first man who goes to the moon will not come back." '':':. "No, but he will be able to communicate by wireless; and if tho first does not come .back'the tenth will, or the . hundreth, because they will finally succeed in taking with them the materials necessary to construct a conveyance for 'their return, In 200 years the journey to.the moon will be considered a voiy simple one, and tickets will-be on sale in all the tourist agencies." "It sounds like a story from Jules Verne, "isaid I. ..'"■.; ■ ■ "But is not all modern life like a story of Jules Verne?" he asked. Whereupon he and his colleagues began to enumerate the inventions which Juie; .Verne described, from 1860 on, as TfalitieS;. ■ ' ■■: . "Few; men," said one of the company,S"haye been gifted witli'such a power 'of ..prophecy; few men have, ex-ei-ied: more"; in'^uence upon1 the researches of.their tribei""- • Somewhat surprised to find that these scholars took seriously the man whose tnles had so aimused- me in my childhood,; I took down J-my books and drew";up 'a list '" of some of the inventions that " he- had ' foreseen,, cheeking those that- have subsequently become reality. . The result was very striking. * ■'.;:. "■■-. ; ;i .. ... A LONG LlST^^iS^**--;. Among }he inventions- which: Jules Vltiio made imaginatively and which liavc since materialised are: Submarines, dirigibles, hydroplanes, trains running- on highways, electric searchlights suijh as are used on automo-. biles, cannons capable of firing shells, ■twenty miles (this'distance has been exceeded), bombs carrying' poisonous gases (alas!), talking motion pictures, television. Descent into the remotest depths of tho sea, which Verne described, has not yet become possible; no? has anyone yet travelled beyond the earth's atmosphere, or manufactured electricity for ships by using the sodium of the sea, or exploited submarine mines with the aid of submarine ships—all of which Verne imagined in. Ms stories. The helicopter lias not yet become practical, and the utilisation of the thermal energy of the sea, while verified as theoretically possible, has not been actually accomplished. "How was he trained?" I wondered. "Whence came that astounding scientific imagination?" I wanted to know of his life. Fortunately one of his descendants;' Mmc. Allotte de la Fuye, lias assembled the requisite documents and. thanks to her, we can gain a clear conception .of the mind which created •Phileas Fogg and Captain Nemo. Jules Verne was born at Nantes in 1828. He was tho son of a lawyer of that town and of a good bourgeois family. Nantes is. a large river port, and Verne grew up among sailors and merchants of ship stores. He heard so many stories of long voyages that at a very early age ho yearned to embark. At the age of 12 ho went oft" as cabin boy on a sailing ship, but his father caught him .at the mouth of the Loire andtook him back to school. He was punished for the escapade and promised not to repeat it. "I shall not travel any more except in imagination." Ho kept his word. THK BALLOON AGE. Between 1858 and I'66'd he published two very gay comedies and two veiy serious articles, one of which was about Poe. He paid tribute to Poe for his studies in hallucination, for his inventive genius, and for his prophetic vision. His double profession of stockbroker and writer was" hot-sufficient to'satisfy Iris extraordinary capacity for ; wor,k. As soon as he could dp so Jules Verne set off on a trip] making a- tour of Scandinavia on •a. freight ship.. At. the Circle de" la ' Press'e Seientifique, where he often went, he made. 'the acquaintance of an extraordinary, man who was then very well known in Trance under the pseudonym of Nadar. Nadar was photographer, caricaturist, traveller, and later much interested in ■balloons. At that timo every boy seemed interested in balloons, and there was already talk of building lieavicr-thaii-.j air balloons. Jules Verne contemplated a book on the subject. Nadar and Verne laboured at the same time upon balloon's—Veriie's being imaginary, tho Victoria, Nadar's- ; being a real one called the Giant: When Verne j had finished his book ho called upon a publisher, M. Hetzel.

Hetzel was not only a but a writer of great talent.

After reading Verne's manuscript, he handed it back to him, saying: "To ray great regret and in spite of .the great merits of the work—.". Verne turned angrily away, but. Hetzel called him back. "You have all the qualities needed for a great story writer," he said, "but make tins' into a real story." A fortnight later Jules Verne brought to him "Five Weeks in a Balloon." This time he had done a real story, and not only did Hetzel accept it at once, but he listened with interest while Verne outlined a sort of scientific epic of the modern world, which would be, in quite another field, t.ho equivalent of Bal/.ac's "Comedie Humaine." J.t was to Ijc composed of a long series I

of stories in which Jules Verne expected to explore in turn the air, the sea, the earth, and even the interior of the earth.

Hetzol was enthusiastic and immediately signed a contract by which Verno agreed to give him two volumes a year for twenty years, in return for which he would receive a guarantee of 20,000 francs a year. This was not much, but Hetzel frequently revised the contract. But even in ita original form, this arrangement gave Verno the certainty of a livelihood without undertaking other work than writing, and he immediately left the Bourse, with the keenest satisfaction. He was then 35 years old. TO THE MOON. From this time on, Verne's production was very regular. In 1865 lie conducted his readers to the centre of the eartt In 1886 ho wrote two volumes, "Fro** tho Earth to tho. Moon" ami "Around tho Moon." Scientists amused themselves by checking up tho calculations and curves used in Verne's stories, and admired his exactitude. The rocket which he sent to; the inoou carried a Frenchman, Michael Ardan, who was a fictional representation of Nadar, and even his name represented simply a transposition of the letters forming Nadar's. ' / The book was such a success that while it was appearing as a serial in a magazine Verne received numerous letters from people who offered to go with him to the moon. Within three years he had achieved literary triumph, his books being, widely read by children in France and abroad; it became the custom to give them as New Year presents, the French equivalent to Christmas gifts. He now longed to take his readers beneath the sea, and he studied aquariums, submarine-atlases, and books on oceanography. In order to work more tranquilly he established himself at Crotoy, a small seaport near Saint-Valery in the estuary of the Somme. Verne was very fond of this shore with its shifting sand dunes. He was almost isolated in his rude little house, and close to the sea which he loved. At this moment a ship, the Great Eastern, had just laid the first transatlantic cable. Verne made a voyage to the United States on board the Great Eastern, talked with the members who helped to Jay the cable, and in this way he rounded out his material for the book, "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea." This book was one of the most striking of the forecasts by Jules Verne, for Captain Nemo's ship, the Nautilus, was in nearly every respect an imaginary precursor of the modern submarine. Verne had great fun writing his book. The story is well constructed, full of mystery, and very thrilling. Some of the adventures he described in it hdve not yet entered the realm of reality— for example, the descent to the deeper pqrtions of, th,e ocean's bed and the carrying of light to these remote waters. Sometimes he wondered whether what ; he wrote did not border upon the. incredible. "But I don't think so," he wrote to his father, "whatever one man is capable of conceiving other men will be jable to achieve.'' , t NEW POWER. , Curiously enough, among the ideas which Verne attributes to his Captain Nemo is one which the great physicist, Claude, has studied in the last. few months —the idea of producing power by utilising the differences of temperature at various depths, and the upward and downward currents in the ocean which result. "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea" appeared just before the beginning of the war of 1870. As soon as the war was over Verne rushed to Paris to see his publisher, Hetzel. As he was walking down tho street he saw an advertisement of Cook's, which suggested to him the idea of travelling around the world in eighty days. He went home .and began to write the book which, published serially in the -"Temps," had a great success. People followed, it breathlessly, and bets were made on the success or failure of the exploit in which Phileas Fogg was engaged. The correspondents of American newspapers cabled each night a summary of the chapter appearing that day. Shipping lines offered Verne huge sums, if ho would have his hero use one of their ships. He refused^ but nevertheless he made a fortune from, jhe book, for it was dramatised and presented on the. stage of the Chatelet for two years. Jules Verne was now both rich and illustrious. In "Kobur the Conqueror" he described a giant helicopter (which has not yet been constructed) and in "Tho Chateau of the Carpathians" he wrote of & machine which greatly resembles' the talking film. This story had a rather sentimental origin. Jules Verne, whose emotional life had been very tranquil, at an advanced age fell in love with a woman whom he lost. It was then that he conceived the story of a grand seigneur of the Carpathians who was enamoured of an Italian singer and who. invented an apparatus for recording 'tier, voice and gestures, in order that after her death he might still have a vivid and almost living image of her. To return to the prophetic power of Jules Verne, not only did he suggest the possibility of all the great inveny tions of the century, but in an article published in New York in the "Forum" lie described the metropolis of the future, advertisements projected upon the clouds, wireless telegraphy, and television. He foresaw the use of selenium for the transmission of pictures, and twenty years later it was used for this purpose. It cannot be said that such imaginative inventions are easy, chimerical or vain. Scientists and .engineers have acknowledged having been inspired by Jules Verne. The aviator, Admiral Byrd, while flying toward the Pole, said, "It is Jules Verne who guides me.''