From the Earth to the Moon; and, Round the Moon
Page 56
******* 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 changedto 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 widow/orphanshave been painstakingly removed. Hypenated words at the end of lineshave 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 >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.>>>>
I have changed the one case of perihelium to the correct perihelion.
>
The former accepted.
>>>
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.
> indicates a different typeface
Removed (only one case) and probably a printers error?
> indicates a non-ascii character, here the greek letter delta
Left in.