From the Earth to the Moon, Direct in Ninety-Seven Hours and Twenty Minutes: and a Trip Round It

During the War of the Rebellion, a new and influential club was established in the city of Baltimore in the State of Maryland. It is well known with what energy the taste for mi...

On the 5th of October, at 8 p.m., a dense crowd pressed towards the saloons of the Gun Club at No. 21, Union Square. All the members of the association resident in Baltimore att...

It is impossible to describe the effect produced by the last words of the honorable president—the cries, the shouts, the succession of roars, hurrahs, and all the varied vocifer...

Barbicane, however, lost not one moment amidst all the enthusiasm of which he had become the object. His first care was to reassemble his colleagues in the board-room of the Gun...

An observer endued with an infinite range of vision, and placed in that unknown centre around which the entire world revolves, might have beheld myriads of atoms filling all spa...

The immediate result of Barbicane's proposition was to place upon the orders of the day all the astronomical facts relative to the Queen of Night. Everybody set to work to study...

President Barbicane had, without loss of time, nominated a Working Committee of the Gun Club. The duty of this Committee was to resolve the three grand questions of the cannon,...

The resolutions passed at the last meeting produced a great effect out of doors. Timid people took fright at the idea of a shot weighing 20,000 lbs. being launched into space; t...

There remained for consideration merely the question of powders. The public awaited with interest its final decision. The size of the projectile, the length of the cannon being...

The American public took a lively interest in the smallest details of the enterprise of the Gun Club. It followed day by day the discussions of the committee. The most simple pr...

One question yet remained to be decided: it was necessary to choose a favourable spot for the experiment. According to the advice of the Observatory of Cambridge, the gun must b...

The astronomical, mechanical, and topographical difficulties resolved, finally came the question of finance. The sum required was far too great for any individual, or even any s...

When the decision was arrived at by the Gun Club, to the disparagement of Texas, every one in America, where reading is an universal acquirement, set to work to study the geogra...

The same evening Barbicane and his companions returned to Tampa Town; and Murchison, the engineer, re-embarked on board the "Tampico" for New Orleans. His object was to enlist a...

During the eight months which were employed in the work of excavation the preparatory works of the casting had been carried on simultaneously with extreme rapidity. A stranger a...

Had the casting succeeded? They were reduced to mere conjecture. There was indeed every reason to expect success, since the mould had absorbed the entire mass of the molten meta...

The great works undertaken by the Gun Club had now virtually come to an end; and two months still remained before the day for the discharge of the shot to the moon. To the gener...

If this astounding news, instead of flying through the electric wires, had simply arrived by post in the ordinary sealed envelope, Barbicane would not have hesitated a moment. H...

On the following day Barbicane, fearing that indiscreet questions might be put to Michel Ardan, was desirous of reducing the number of the audience to a few of the initiated, hi...

"Now that the speaker has favoured us with so much imagination, would he be so good as to return to his subject, and give us a little practical view of the question?"

While the contract of this duel was being discussed by the president and the captain—this dreadful, savage duel, in which each adversary became a man-hunter—Michel Ardan was res...

That same day all America heard of the affair of Captain Nicholl and President Barbicane, as well as its singular _denouement_. From that day forth, Michel Ardan had not one mom...

The new plans had been sent to Breadwill and Co., of Albany, with the request for their speedy execution. The projectile was consequently cast on the 2d November, and immediatel...

On the 20th October in the preceding year, after the close of the subscription, the president of the Gun Club had credited the Observatory of Cambridge with the necessary sums f...

It was the 22nd of November; the departure was to take place in ten days. One operation alone remained to be accomplished to bring all to a happy termination; an operation delic...

The first of December had arrived! the fatal day! for, if the projectile were not discharged that very night at 10h. 46m. 40s. p.m., more than eighteen years must roll by before...

At the moment when that pyramid of fire rose to a prodigious height into the air, the glare of the flame lit up the whole of Florida; and for a moment day superseded night over...

That very night, the startling news so impatiently awaited, burst like a thunderbolt over the United States of the Union, and thence, darting across the ocean, ran through all t...

As ten o'clock struck, Michel Ardan, Barbicane, and Nicholl, took leave of the numerous friends they were leaving on the earth. The two dogs, destined to propagate the canine ra...

What had happened? What effect had this frightful shock produced? Had the ingenuity of the constructors of the projectile obtained any happy result? Had the shock been deadened,...

This curious but certainly correct explanation once given, the three friends returned to their slumbers. Could they have found a calmer or more peaceful spot to sleep in? On the...

The position of the projectile with regard to the sun did not change. Astronomically, it was daylight on the lower part, and night on the upper; so when during this narrative th...

This revelation came like a thunderbolt. Who could have expected such an error in calculation? Barbicane would not believe it. Nicholl revised his figures: they were exact. As t...

On the 4th of December, when the travellers awoke after fifty-four hours' journey, the chronometer marked five o'clock of the terrestrial morning. In time it was just over five...

Every object thrown from the projectile would follow the same course and never stop until it did. There was a subject for conversation which the whole evening could not exhaust.

What had happened? Whence the cause of this singular intoxication, the consequences of which might have been very disastrous? A simple blunder of Michel's, which, fortunately, N...

Barbicane had now no fear of the issue of the journey, at least as far as the projectile's impulsive force was concerned; its own speed would carry it beyond the neutral line; i...

Barbicane had evidently hit upon the only plausible reason of this deviation. However slight it might have been, it had sufficed to modify the course of the projectile. It was a...

In one sense, the pupil's witty answer might be given by a large majority of sublunary beings. How many people have heard speak of the moon who have never seen it—at least throu...

The course taken by the projectile, as we have before remarked, was bearing it towards the moon's northern hemisphere. The travellers were far from the central point which they...

At half-past two in the morning, the projectile was over the thirteenth lunar parallel and at the effective distance of 500 miles, reduced by the glasses to five. It still seeme...

At the moment when this phenomenon took place so rapidly, the projectile was skirting the moon's north pole at less than twenty-five miles distance. Some seconds had sufficed to...

We may, perhaps, be astonished to find Barbicane and his companions so little occupied with the future reserved for them in their metal prison which was bearing them through the...

The projectile had just escaped a terrible danger, and a very unforeseen one. Who would have thought of such a rencontre with meteors? These erring bodies might create serious p...

At six in the evening the projectile passed the south pole at less than forty miles off, a distance equal to that already reached at the north pole. The elliptical curve was bei...

But the projectile had passed the enceinte of Tycho, and Barbicane and his two companions watched with scrupulous attention the brilliant rays which the celebrated mountain shed...

For a long time Barbicane and his companions looked silently and sadly upon that world which they had only seen from a distance, as Moses saw the land of Canaan, and which they...

"I think, sir, that the operation is nearing its completion," replied Lieutenant Bronsfield. "But who would have thought of finding such a depth so near in shore, and only 200 m...

"It is 'they' come back again!" the young midshipman had said; and every one had understood him. No one doubted but that that meteor was the projectile of the Gun Club. As to th...

The spot where the projectile sank under the waves was exactly known; but machinery to grasp it and bring it to the surface of the ocean was still wanting. It must first be inve...

We may remember the intense sympathy which had accompanied the travellers on their departure. If at the beginning of the enterprise they had excited such emotion both in the old...