#Akkad Pseudoman

[books0977]

Zero to Eighty: Being my Lifetime Doings, Reflections, and Inventions; also my Journey around the Moon. Akkad Pseudoman [pseud.]. Edwin F Northrup. Princeton, New Jersey: Scientific Publishing Company, 1937. First edition. Original dust jacket. 

A very technical fictional account of the invention of a spacecraft and circumnavigation of the Moon by the inventor of the Ajax-Northrup high-frequency induction furnace. The experiments begin in 1945 and the flight occurs in 1961.

[othmeralia]

Continuing our month-long exploration of all things moon-related in the Othmer Library collections, we present Edwin Fitch Northup’s 1937 science fiction novel: Zero to Eighty: Being My Lifetime Doings, Reflections, and Inventions, also My Journey Around the Moon.

From 1903 to 1910, Northrup (1866-1940) served as vice-president of the Leeds & Northrup Co. where he designed and received patents for multiple electrical instruments. Beginning in 1910 and continuing through 1920, Northrup was a professor of physics at Princeton University. His science fiction novel was published in 1937 under the pseudonym Akkad Pseudoman:

“…the narrative is presented as the autobiography of a wholly fictitious individual who is born in the year 1920, and who reviews in his eightieth year his life's career and accomplishments. The major achievement of the principal character of the story, Akkad Pseudoman (pretended man), is the realization of a youthful dream that it is possible to create a means for escaping the earth's gravity, circling the moon, and returning alive with records to the earth. He accomplishes this feat without invoking any imaginary physical features or laws of nature. In short, one purpose of this book is to prove the possibility (sufficient funds being available) of doing all that is herein described.” - Preface

Fun fact: the library’s copy of this novel is signed by Northrup!