Notes: Jules Verne’s “From
the Earth to the Moon” and “A Trip Around It” > >I
originally intended to “correct” some of the numbers in the book.
>For example, page 207 has “thirteenth” where
“thirtieth” would be >more appropriate. Some of the densities
and volumes and masses don’t >match up. The business with the wrong
exhaust velocity of the gun >is also a bit confusing. The dates and times
aren’t quite consistent >throughout, although they are close enough
that Verne must have been >working from a time-line. For example, I think he
has the time for >the fall back to earth exactly matching the time for the
trip out. >There are also inconsistent spellings, for example
“aluminum” and >“aluminium”. Some of these annoyed
me, in the sense of disturbing >my reading; since the reader is reading for
pleasure, the annoyance >should be removed.
All cases of the British? spelling of aluminium have been changed to the
American spelling aluminum.
>I decided that the correction project was going to be a lot of
trouble, >and might be a perversion of the original work. I concentrated
instead >on producing an accurate rendition of the text. However, if a
French >speaker can find a French edition, it might be nice to see if the
>translators introduced errors. The measurements seem to have been
>converted from metric without regard for significant figures. Occasional
>conversions are simply omitted, with “feet” inserted for
“meters” without >fixing the numbers. These might be safely
recomputed without doing >violence to the spirit of the original work.
Whether one should >standardize the spelling of “aluminium” I
don’t know. “Aluminium” >has a certain charm. I
don’t know what American or English usage was >at the time. We might
consider converting all the temperatures to >Fahrenheit. I suggest removing
the page numbers, undoing all the >hyphenation, and repackaging the lines at
a length of (up to) 72 >characters, >with only occasional word breaks.
Page #s and a full reformating has been done. Line widoworphans have
been painstakingly removed. Hypenated words at the end of lines have been
eliminated to the best of my judgement.
>I think a table of units should be offered for the reader.
>myriameter = 10 km >fathom = 6 feet; league ~ 3 miles, but don’t
know French usage in 1865. >page 125 has perigee 86,410 leagues (French), or
238,833 miles <mean> >Would be nice to know the currency conversions
of the day. > >We may criticize Verne for his errors, but the remarkable
thing is >how much he got right! I think this was the first engineering
proposal >for space travel, using physics instead of magic. Verne deserves
much >of the credit for inspiring the early rocket pioneers, and ultimately
>today’s space program. As “literary” history, I note that
Heinlein’s >“The Man Who Sold the Moon” borrows from it.
> ><add conversion table for units. fathom, league, meter, mile, foot,
CF> ><contact publisher for translator information> ><is
perihelium {sic} a real word? maybe substitute perihelion?>
I have changed the one case of perihelium to the correct perihelion.
><There’s an incorrect reference to Nov. 30 in the early
part of book 2 to >fix> [I read it over and left it there. Close enough
for fiction, but I am sure they would have missed the moon by a lot.]
Dates were not fixed.
><inconsistent spelling of Palliser, Palisser>
This only occurs twice in the book, so both are left in.
><pyroxyle sometimes with xile>
‘yle’ ending was accepted by undisputed “majority
rule”
><aluminum and aluminium>
The former accepted.
><maybe 18000 instead of 17000 yardssec?> ><30th
degree of lunar latitude instead of 13th?> ><there seems to be an inconsistency
in the title for book 2>
Numbers, units, dates, times and math errors have NOT been changed.
>Typographic conventions in the book: >The book uses ligatures for
ff fi fl ffi ffl; I have simply spelled these >out. >Chapter N is in
italics. >The chapter titles are in small caps. >The first word of each
chapter has an oversize capital, >and the rest of the word is in small caps.
If the first >word is two letters or less, the second word is also in
>small caps. >AM and PM are always in small caps, as A.M. or P.M.
All these have been changed to PG standards.
>My typographic conventions: >There are a few lines longer than 80
character, usually because I have >inserted a {sic phrase} in the line. I am
using % as a line-break >character >in these cases; the % and the
following new-line should be deleted. >{correction} I have indicated some
candidates for correction in braces.
All these were appreciated! and either corrected or ignored.
>italics are marked with underbars
These are left in for the next proofer to turn into CAPS for PG.
>#SMALL CAPS# are enclosed in hash-marks >$ae $‘e
dollar-sign preceeds ligatures and accented characters. > The accent follows
the $ and precedes the letter. I’ve tried to get > ‘ and ‘
(as accents) right. > I have used : as an accent marker for umlaut.
All are removed.
>^2 means superscript 2. circumflex also occurs as an accent marker.
>I’ve used ‘ and ‘ to enclose (recursive) quotes. Ascii
has no provision >for distinguishable open and close doublequotes. >The
book uses ligatures for ff fi fl ffi ffl; I have simply spelled these >out.
>— moderate dash and—— long dash I have added surrounding
spaces. >I also switched to double space between sentences. >@ degree sign >L for British Pound.
All these conventions (except the circumflex) have been accepted.
><bold> indicates a different typeface
Removed (only one case) and probably a printers error?
><delta> indicates a non-ascii character, here the greek letter
delta
Left in.
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