8 Jules Verne Inventions That Came True

As made interactively evident by a retro-futuristic Google doodle, Tuesday would have been the 183rd birthday of Jules Verne. Had he lived to see 2011, the French science fiction writer also would have seen many of his fanciful inventions made real—more or less.

Electric Submarines

In perhaps his most famous novel, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea,Verne’s Captain Nemo travels the world’s oceans in a giant electric submarine, the Nautilus—the inspiration for the portholed Jules Verne Google doodle.

Aside from its organ, formal dining room, and other luxuries, the Nautilus isn’t all that different from some modern subs, such as the circa-1964, three-passengerAlvin (pictured), which is powered by lead-acid batteries.

Like Alvin, the Nautilus was fully powered by electricity, “which at that time had a kind of magical aura,” said Rosalind Williams, a historian of technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

In the book Captain Nemo describes electricity as “a powerful agent, obedient, rapid, easy, which conforms to every use, and reigns supreme on board my vessel.”

Newscasts

In an 1889 article, “In the Year 2889,” Jules Verne described an alternative to newspapers: “Instead of being printed, the Earth Chronicle is every morning spoken to subscribers, who, from interesting conversations with reporters, statesmen and scientists, learn the news of the day.”

The first newscast didn’t happen until 1920, according to the Associated Press—nearly 30 years after Verne imagined it. The first network-television newscast would have to wait another 28 years, according to CBS News. By 1974 millions were able to watch U.S. President Richard Nixon resign on TV (pictured).

Solar Sails

In his 1865 science fiction classic, From the Earth to the Moon, Jules Verne speculated about light-propelled spacecraft. Today, the technology has a name: solar sails, one of which is pictured here in an artist’s concept for NASA‘s orbiting NanoSail-D. (See “Solar Sail Hybrid Launches Today From Japan.”)

Today, Verne is widely regarded as a prophetic writer who imagined many modern technologies decades before their times.

“He predicted a lot of things that have happened, but that’s because he was reading a lot and talking with people and he knew what was going on in the world around him, so why should we be surprised?” MIT’s Williams said.

“It wasn’t magic. He was just paying attention to things.”

Lunar Modules

Jules Verne also wrote about what are today called lunar modules, such as the cone-shaped crew capsule atop this NASA rocket. In From the Earth to the Moon, he described “projectiles” that could be used to carry passengers to the Moon.

Verne imagined “a big gun going off, and you get enough force to break through gravity,” MIT’s Williams said.

Verne generally took pains to explain how his imagined inventions worked. “He’s not like H.G. Wells, who makes up a substance that takes you to the moon,” Williams said. Verne’s “ideas about how you do things were always grounded in material realities.”

Skywriting

Jules Verne was a keen observer of the world around him, and one of the fields he paid attention to was advertising. In “In the Year 2889,” Verne described “atmospheric advertisements”—similar to skywriting (pictured).

“Everyone has noticed those enormous advertisements reflected from the clouds,” Verne wrote, “so large they may be seen by the populations of whole cities or even entire countries.”

Despite his fascination with gadgets and machines, Verne had no engineering training, MIT’s Williams said.

He had a background in law “and worked in the theater,” she said. “And he had friends who were, for example, interested in heavier-than-air flight. So he hung out with people who were interested in science and inventions and exploration.”

Videoconferencing

In “In the Year 2889″ Jules Verne describes the “phonotelephote”—a forerunner to today’s videoconferencing technologies, such as the setup above, used to connect distant family members in North and South Korea in 2005.

The phonotelephote allowed “the transmission of images by means of sensitive mirrors connected by wires,” Verne wrote.

Verne’s phonotelephote is one of the earliest—if not the earliest—reference to a videophone in fiction, according to Technovelgy.com, a website that catalogs inventions and ideas from science fiction.

Verne’s imagination was also heavily influenced by scientific and technical journals, MIT’s William said.

“He read voraciously,” she said. “He went to the men’s club where all these journals were and he took notes. So he was aware of a submarine that was being tried out in the North Sea, for example.”

Taser

Jules Verne’s favorite topic of speculation was the vehicle, but he also wrote about weapons that didn’t yet exist. For example, in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, he described a gun that delivers a strong electric jolt, much like a Taser “electronic control device” (pictured).

Of his device, Verne wrote: “The balls sent by this gun are not ordinary balls, but little cases of glass. These glass cases are covered with a case of steel, and weighted with a pellet of lead; they are real Leyden bottles”—18th-century devices used to store static electricity—”into which the electricity is forced to a very high tension. With the slightest shock they are discharged, and the animal, however strong it may be, falls dead.”

Verne didn’t portray all his inventions as beneficial. “It is a mistake to think he is presenting all these gee-whiz gadgets as something desirable,” MIT’s Williams said.

“Verne is all too keenly aware of the military and policing potential of new inventions, and highly distrustful of contemporary societies to use them wisely and justly.”

Splashdown Spaceship

In From the Earth to the Moon, Verne imagined a spacecraft landing in the ocean and floating—just like this Mercury capsule.

There were other 19th-century French authors who weaved current technologies into their works, but Verne is remembered today because he also happened to be a great storyteller, MIT’s Williams said.

“He worked 20 years in a theater,” she said. “His characters are simple and they do neat things … [Verne's] genius is combining deep story lines with up-to-date things and this great excitement about science and invention.”