Still listening to Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, I’m struck by how he speaks of the rate of the earth cooling down, and it’s obvious that he doesn’t know about the radioactive heating of the core. Not surprising, of course, since the book came out in 1869-70. He has a similar discussion in A Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864)
Antoine Henri Becquerel didn’t discover radioactivity until 1896, and the Curies’ work with radium and polonium was a little later, starting in 1898.
I’ve always thought of Verne as one who was “up” on the latest scientific discoveries and their implications, especially those discoveries made by the French. But as far as I ca n recall – and a quick internet search seems to confirm this – he never wrote at all about radioactivity or, for hat matter, X-rays. Verne continued writing almost until his death in 1905, and his son Michel continued their collaboration for almost a decade after that. Yet radioactivity never shows up in his writings.
Was he getting old and slowing down in his reading? Did he find the topic beyond him? Although some people apparently think he Nautilus was powered by atomic energy, that was just in the 1954 Disney film.
H.G. Wells, of course, famously wrote “The World Set Free”, based on the work of Frederick Soddy, and predicting (by name) “Atomic Bombs”. Later in life he wrote “Star Begotten”, about aliens influencing human evolution by using cosmic rays. But he was a younger man than Verne.
No. Nemo is only too happy to tell Arronax that he’s using electricity, and that he uses sodium batteries that use sodium extracted from seawater.
It doesn’t really make thermodynamic sense, and he could as easily have used lead-acid Plante batteries that are rechargeable (and which actually are used in submarines ), but I think Verne was enamored of the idea of Nemo taking his raw materials from the sea.
Two other critical things made from raw materials taken directly from the sea in real submarines is potable water as well as the very oxygen that submariners breathe. Both are produced from seawater.
(Seawater is distilled to make fresh water, then deionized, then broken apart into hydrogen and oxygen via electrolysis.)
Seawater is also used as a heat sink in the condenser of the steam plant.
Or just thought that it sounded more exotic. Just like Asimov didn’t really believe that the optimal computer involved positrons in a device made of platinum and iridium.
We’re going off on tangents here. My point was that Verne tended to keep up on the latest scientific an engineering developments and tried t work them into his stories, and that he also liked to trumpet the achievements of French scientists and engineers. With radioactivity he had a chance to do both, yet he never even mentions the topic. Was he simply slowing down with age?
When did Becquerel and the Curies publish their studies? And were those studies widely distributed at the time that Verne would be likely to see them?
I really do not know but it seems important to the question. And, further, that even if Verne did see that info it was in a form he could understand. That was bleeding edge stuff at the time. I’m not sure the implications for power generation would be obvious.
Radioactivity may well have been know in some obscure circles just around the time of Verne’s death, but it was not understood, see the lack of safety measures when handling radium and the like, even decades later, or while using X-rays. And in particular it was not known that radioactive decay could generate enormous amounts of usable energy. The 1940s are considered the early era of nuclear reactors.
Radioactivity and, in particular, radium were already part of pop culture by the early 20th century. It wan’t an obscure topic, relegated to specialis magazines.
That’s from circa 1903
On top of which, at least in his younger days, Verne DID read the specialist scientific/engineering journals. It’s how he knew about the capabilities of composites, for instance (used to make strong but quiet railroad wheels), which he used in Robur the Conqueror
Well, he certainly knew nothing about Earth Science. The Master of the World has an extinct volcano in the Appalachians and a giant deep inland sea in the middle of Kansas.
When Wells published The First Men in the Moon, Verne groused that he had gotten men to the moon with gunpowder, which existed in the real world, while Wells made up a fantastical anti-gravity device.
Perhaps Verne thought radioactivity was too far on the fringes for the types of stories Verne wanted to write.
He did, but it should also be pointed out that Verne wrote a glowing preface to Robert Cromie’s novel A Plunge into Space (1890), in which the hero travels to Mars in a sphere covered with anti-gravity material. Verne didn’t grouse about THAT (First Men in the Moon appeared ten years later, in 1900-1901)
Actually, there’s some controversy about that. Verne didn’t read English, so how could he judge the story?
And, to make things even muddier, the only other time I know that Verne and Wells covered a similar topic was Invisibility. In The Invisible Man (1897), H. G. Wells tries to give a scientific explanation for how his invisible man disappears. It’s not really very convincing, but it’s something.
Verne’s Invisible Man story is The Secret of Wilhelm Storitz (written 1897, published 1910). It’s true that Verne’s son MIchel edited and made some changes, but nothing that affects the central point of invisibility, which Verne does not even attempt to explain. In this case, Wells was more scientifically based.
By the way, I’d forgotten about it, but Verne DOES mention “Roentgen Rays” (X-rays) in Storitz, so he was keeping up with the competition (Wells) and science. But he doesn’t really use X-rays in any way in the book. And he didn’t ever get to radioactivity, as far as I can recall.