1962      With Barbara Eden                                                              1961

I recently found an old copy of “Flight of the Lost Balloon” (1961), loosely based on Verne’s Five Weeks in a Balloon. In contrast, the Flight of the Lost Balloon (1961) version lacks the star power and quality of 1962’s movie Five Weeks in a Balloon.  “Flight of the Lost Balloon” does offer a closer technical design version of Verne’s balloon. The 1961 movie correctly uses a battery current to produce hydrogen from sulfuric acid. It uses indirect heating tubes to power lift and up and down control. Verne’s Hydrogen heating system would have been dangerous even with his enclosed piping and double skin design. The 1962 movie design uses basic hot air heating. 

NASA CHANNELS THE FUTURE through Verne 

Alexander MacDonald, chief economist for NASA, addressed a group of writers at the first-ever Space Economy Camp for Writers, sponsored by the Interplanetary Initiative at Arizona State University.The purpose of the three-day camp was to support the 20 established writers as they imagine space worlds with new economic models.

“This is why you all are so important not just to space flight but to imagining in general,” MacDonald told the group.

“We don’t go to space because we have the machines. We go to space because we have a culture of people who are inspired to build the machines.

“The narratives create the future.” MacDonald said that one of the first known stories of space flight was in the 16th century, when it was speculated that people could harness flying geese to ride to the moon.Edgar Allan Poe wrote a story about a bell-maker who uses his knowledge on how to condense air to keep himself alive on the way to the moon.

“That was the first spacecraft components list in history, and his character gets to the moon,” MacDonald said.Poe inspired Jules Verne, who wrote “From the Earth to the Moon,” a novel that was set in Baltimore as an ode to Poe. Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, a Russian and rocket scientist, was inspired by Verne and theorized the science of spaceflight in the 19th century.

MacDonald said that Robert Goddard, an American engineer and physicist who invented the first liquid-propelled rocket, was inspired by “The War of the Worlds” by H.G. Wells.

 

 

                                    Vernian obscura et Trivia 1

                             Quentin R. Skrabec Ph.D.

          Did Verne predict August 18, 1913, at Monte Carlo?

The gambler's fallacy, also known as the Monte Carlo fallacy or the fallacy of the maturity of chances, is the incorrect belief that if a particular event occurs more frequently than usual during the past, it is less likely to happen in the future (or vice versa) when mathematics established that the probability of such series events does not depend on what has happened in the past.

            The most famous example of the gambler's fallacy occurred at the roulette tables of a Monte Carlo casino in 1913. When the last ten roulette wheel spins, the ball landed on black. The word spread throughout the casino. Gamblers thought a red was long overdue, so they started betting on red. But the ball kept on landing on black. As the trend continued, the gamblers became more and more convinced that the next turn would land on red. The crowds and wagers increased-- and so did their losses. Herd mentality continued as word spread to the streets of Monte Carlo. It was after 26 consecutive black spins that the ball finally landed on red, and the streak came to an end. By this time, the losses were staggering. The casino had made a fortune, but most players were crushed. The event became known as the “Monte Carlo fallacy,” synonymous with the gambler’s fallacy.

            In his novel Mathias Sandorf, in 1885, Jules Verne foreshadowed the panic of the 1913 event. Verne’s fictional characters at a Monte Carlo casino show the same behavior as the future event in 1913.  In a subplot, Verne takes on the gambler's fallacy, mathematics facing a bettor, the fantasy of winning through luck or strategies, as well as the moral issues of the problem gambler. Verne’s gambling fallacy was based on a run of seventeen red (rouge) cards in trente-et-quarante.[i] Verne's fallacy event is covered in his chapters “Seventeen Times” and “The Last Game.” The series of red (rouge) cards caused a rush to the tables with gamblers as the length of the series increased the odds of a black card. His characters and all the casino bettors lose most of their fortunes on betting at the end of the series. Verne’s characters return the next day to bet on the roulette tables. They hit their winning streak, coming close to “breaking the bank.”  They obsessively continue to gamble, dreaming of millions, but ultimately, the law of chance breaks them.

            Verne outlines the folly of the gamblers and notes and demonstrates the house advantage in the long run. Verne offers literary proof of the gambler's fallacy. The point is that regardless of previous results or series run, the next has about a 48.6 percent chance of red or black with the house advantage. If you look at the odds of seeing a 17 series color run, it is .0006 percent for Verne’s 17 red run and less than .00001 percent for the 1913 actual run. Seeing Verne’s 17 run would be a rare event meeting his description that it would go down in “the annuals of history.” For an individual, both would amount to a once-in-a-lifetime event.  The record was registered in 1943 when the red appeared 32 times in a row!  The probability of seeing such an event in French Roulette is (18/37)32 = 0.000000000096886885 percent.

            Verne's characters ( Toronthal and Sarcany)  believe in deveine and veine (good and bad luck) over mathematics and simple chance. However, Toronthal was a problem gambler looking for methods and strategies to improve over chance.  Verne deals with the popularity of various winning strategies of 18^th and 19^th-century casino bettors. Toronthal (a corrupt banker) studies the game, looking for favorable combinations. Verne’s gamblers try variations of two types of strategies believed by many Victorian gamblers. The first is to study the roulette wheel table results called the “Jagger Strategy.” In 1873, a famous world-publicized event occurred at Monte Carlo. A roulette-playing Englishman, Joseph Jagger, won $350,000 (millions in today’s dollars”) at Monte Carlo by finding a roulette wheel with a mechanical issue bias and seized on it.[ii]

             

            The Martingale strategy more suitable for trente-et-quarante was one of the gamblers doubling the bet after every loss so that the first win would recover all previous losses plus win a profit equal to the original stake. What keeps Martingale players using the system is they will win their small bet many times before they run into a streak that wipes out their current table bankroll. Verne alludes to the mathematical faults of such strategies limited by rules on the maximum bets. A  cash bank of money limited any table. In 1885, Monte Carlo, breaking the bank, would stop the action.[iii]

Verne’s character, Toronthal, believed he could beat the odds.  His friend Sarcany (a petty criminal) even suggests Toronthal obsession to win is a sickness, and he has lost control. Verne deals with the herd and individual psychology of the gamblers, believing their bad luck would turn.

QRS

---

[i] Trente-et-quarante is French “card roulette.’’ Its series red/black odds and house advantage (1.25% to 2.7%) is similar to French Roulette and one of the best games for gamblers. Also French roulette/ Trente-et-quarante have “second chance” rules that lower the house advantage.   Note American roulette was two green slots (house wins) versus one in French roulette so the house advantage is 5.26%.

[ii] The story goes that he hired six clerks to carefully monitor all six roulette tables at the Casino Monte Carlo. It was impossible for them to write the numbers since it would have raised suspicion, so they had to memorise the outcomes of each spin instead. Then, they would provide this useful data to Jagger.

 

 The End of Steam in Power Production???

Many engineers can now foresee replacing steam power production, the cornerstone of power production for 200 years. Remember that coal, natural gas, oil,  nuclear, and even some solar electrical plants use steam turbines. Research at Universities has led to a pilot plant using carbon dioxide in supercritical phases to replace steam. The Supercritical Transformational Electric Power project is one of the world's largest-scale and most comprehensive, funded by the Department of Energy.  A key project goal is to advance the state-of-the-art for high-temperature carbon dioxide in the power cycle performance. This breakthrough brings me to one of Jules Verne’s most obscure predictions in Paris in the Twentieth Century, written in 1863.  Verne predicted that in 1960 Paris: “Carbonic acid (carbon dioxide) now dethroning steam..”[1] Verne offered this as if his readers might understand such a possibility. Verne rarely predicted without some scientific backing.  In fact, in the 1860s, the use of carbon dioxide was pursued by Victorian engineers and scientists.  Marc Brunel and his son Isambard ( Great Eastern fame)  conducted over 15,000 experiments on an engine driven by carbonic acid based on Micheal Faraday’s theories. In the late 1860s, James Baldwin detailed his patent for carbonic acid, but using the physical phases of carbon dioxide at available temperatures and pressures lacked the efficiency of steam. Today, engineering allows super temperatures and pressures in the engine cycle. It may turn out that one of Verne’s little-noticed predictions will become one of his best.  Quentin Skrabec

 

---

[1] Jules Verne, Paris in the Twentieth Century, Ballantine Books, 1996, p. 12