Jules Verne 'From the Earth to the Moon' — Columbiad Capsule Launch Scene, c.1865

Surprisingly human in scale, this hand-colored engraving depicts Victorian adventurers casually boarding a bullet-shaped lunar projectile via wooden ladder — as though catching an omnibus rather than departing for the Moon. Workers and onlookers in period dress observe the enormous ribbed aluminum capsule, its hatch open at the apex. The nonchalant staging of humanity's first imagined spaceflight is both charming and absurd, a perfect encapsulation of Jules Verne's matter-of-fact approach to radical technological speculation.