From the Earth to the Moon is an 1865 novel by Jules Verne. It tells the story of the Baltimore Gun Club, a post-American Civil War society of weapons enthusiasts, and their attempts to build an enormous Columbiad space gun and launch three people-the Gun Club's president, his Philadelphian armor-making rival, and a French poet-in a projectile with the goal of a moon landing. The character of Michel Ardan, the French member of the party in the novel, was inspired by the real-life photographer F lix Nadar.