Jules Verne takes aim at some amusing stereotypes of Americans in this story of a pre-rocketry attempt to shoot a cannonball to the Moon. Those Yankees don’t do anything by halves!

His means is a Columbiad cannon so enormous that it must be bored 900 feet into the ground, so immense that 1200 smelting furnaces would be needed to create the iron for its casting, so stupendous that 100 tons of guncotton would be needed to loft its cannonball heavenwards.

The journey must be watched from the tallest peak of the Rocky Mountains through a new telescope with a reflector measuring 16 feet in diameter and a tube reaching skyward 280 feet.

And then - a simple telegram upsets all the preparations. An unknown Frenchman has taken ship and is on the way. And he has firmly decided that he will ride inside the projectile!