Nellie Bly, Jules Verne, and the World on the Threshold of the American Age

• Published in: Canadian Review of American Studies
• Main Author: Ruddick, Nicholas
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: University of Toronto Press Inc. (UTPress) 1999
• Subjects: Literature and Literary Theory; History; Cultural Studies; North Pole
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.3138/cras-029-01-01; https://utpjournals.press/doi/pdf/10.3138/CRAS-029-01-01

There was a model of the terrestrial globe, some forty feet in circum- ference, therefore about the size of an ordinary three-story house: the reduction from reality was one millionth. It was not only the globe of the school-room magnified,—it was a synopsis of the conditions and the resources of this world of ours: the course of the rivers, the chains of the mountains, the infractuosities of the coast and the appalling expanse of the sea, the extent of the forbidden region which guards the poles could be seen and comprehended; the mineral products were indicated by dots of different colors for the different species: the lines of navigation and railway travel and telegraphic communication could be traced. The globe slowly revolved, and the spectators, hushed and subdued for the most part by the grandeur of the scheme, passed round it by a spiral gallery of three grades, by which they could look down on the north pole and up at the southern one. ("Loitering Through the Paris Exposition" 1890, 367)