Jules Verne's Columbiad Gun Launch – From the Earth to the Moon

Three top-hatted gentlemen descend into the mouth of the great Columbiad cannon in a wicker basket, lowered by crane and pulley against a moonlit sky — the very Moon they intend to reach hanging pale above. A vast crowd of spectators lines the horizon behind a forest of industrial smokestacks and derricks, bearing witness to mankind's audacious first shot at the cosmos. The scene crackles with Victorian ambition: science as spectacle, engineering as theater.