February 8, 1828 Jules Verne is Born

February 8, 1828 Jules Verne is Born Jules Verne was born on February 8, 1828, in Nantes, France. His father intended for Jules to follow in his footsteps and become an attorney, so he sent him to Paris to study. But Jules found that he loved literature. He wrote plays, worked, and published short stories and scientific essays. He married in 1857 and worked at other jobs as he continued to write. Since he loved science, he wanted to write novels that would combine facts about science with adventure and fiction. The first novel he published was Five Weeks in a Balloon. He signed a long-term contract to write more of this style of novel, and he was able to devote his time to writing without needing to work at other jobs.

Jules Verne produced more than 60 works, many of them based on the same premise as Five Weeks in a Balloon. Later, his work became more pessimistic, pointing out the problems that could occur in the world because of the technology that could come in the future.

Jules Verne died in Amiens, France, on March 24, 1905. Many of his unfinished manuscripts were found by his son, who revised and completed them before having them published. There are books that were started by Jules Verne that were published several years after his death.

Since Jules Verne was born in France and spent much of his life there, his books were written in French and, of course, had French titles. See if you can match the titles of a few of Jules Verne’s most famous books with the French titles shown below.

Matching

_____1. Five Weeks in a Balloon

a. De la terre à la lune

_____2. Journey to the Center of the Earth

b. Maître du monde

_____3. From the Earth to the Moon

c. Le Tour du Monde en quatre-vingts jours

_____4. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea

d. Cinq Semaines en balloon

_____5. Around the World in Eighty Days

e. Vingt mille lieues sous les mers

_____6. The Master of the World

f. Voyage au centre de la Terre

©2016 Bonnie Rose Hudson WriteBonnieRose.com

Jules Verne is credited with making various predictions about the future of science. Since he was very interested in science, it makes sense that he would write about things that he thought could happen in the future. He built on what other scientists had already been working on and used his own knowledge of science to guess what the future might look like. If the following statements are true or are guesses Jules Verne made that came true, mark the statement true. If it is not something Jules Verne predicted or if the statement did not come true, mark it false.

__________1. The United States would be the first country to send a vehicle to the moon.

__________2. The number of people in the crew on the first vehicle to the moon would be five.

__________3. The spacecraft in Jules Verne’s novel used something similar to retro-rockets.

__________4. The spacecraft in Jules Verne’s novel closely resembled the command module in the

Apollo missions in the size and shape.

__________5. Jules Verne spoke of weightlessness in his novel.

__________6. The first men to journey to the moon would splash down in the Atlantic Ocean when they returned to Earth.

__________7. The first space vehicle to go to the moon would launch from California.

__________8. Jules Verne’s novels spoke about a submarine that would be powered by electricity.

__________9. In his novels, Jules Verne spoke of atmospheric advertisements which were similar to skywriting.

__________10. Jules Verne was one of the earliest authors to mention a type of phonotelephone in one of his novels, which is similar to videoconferencing.


Answer Key: Matching: 1. d 2. f 3. a 4. e 5. c 6. b

True or False: 1. True 2. False—Jules Verne said the number of people on the spacecraft would be three, which it was. 3. True 4. True 5. True 6. False—Jules Verne said they would splash down in the Pacific Ocean, which they did. 7. False—Jules Verne said the first vehicle to go to the moon would launch from Florida, which it did. 8. True 9. True 10. True
