Voyage a la Lune

In 1865, Jules Verne wrote Voyage a la Lune, a story in which a group of scientists traveled to the moon in a capsule launched from Florida. "If anyone will attain the moon," Verne wrote in the preface, "It will be the Americans."

In 1903, after improving on the movie camera which Edison failed to patent internationally, the Melier brothers' fledgling Star Film Company adapted the story to the silver screen, complete with can-can girls on the launchpad and a very sour-faced French moon made of cheese. Each individual frame, 16 for every second, was painstakingly painted with translucent pigment, making Voyage a la Lune the first color motion picture.

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