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Inspired by Jules Verne

From: Garmt de Vries-Uiterweerd <g.devries~at~phys.uu.nl>
Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2007 10:24:37 +0200
To: JVF <jvf~at~gilead.org.il>

Dear fellow Vernians,

A friend of mine, Anton van der Steen of the Dutch JV Society, sent me the
following question.

Anton collects stamps related (directly or remotely) to Jules Verne, and
is now going to expand his collection to persons who have been inspired by
Jules Verne's books to take up a certain profession or to invent
something. He cites some examples:

Dr. Robert Hutchings Goddard, Hermann Oberth and Konstantin Tsiolkovsky
were inspired by "De la Terre a la Lune".
"Robur-le-Conquerant" supposedly inspired Igor Sikorsky to build the first
working helicopter.
Norbert Casteret took up speleology after reading "Voyage au centre de la
Terre".
Alberto Santos Dumont did many experiments with airships, apparently after
reading "Cinq semaines en ballon" (and all other JV novels, before the age
of 10).

Anton wondered if there is an overview of people who were inspired in this
way by Jules Verne's stories. I can't think of any, so I thought I'd
forward his question to the Forum. It might be instructive to compile such
a list ourselves.

Of course, it's always tricky to establish whether someone was really
inspired by JV, or just happened to do something similar to what Verne
described. One would need to see interviews, citations from books, or
other hard evidence, and this may not always be easy to find.

Ideas and suggestions are welcome!

Cheers,
Garmt.
Received on Wed 18 Apr 2007 - 11:24:40 IDT

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