80 Days Around the World -- How About 80 Seconds?

Years ago I was entranced by a film that took the main characters around the world by hot-air balloon,* steamship and train.   In the film and novel Around the World in  80 Days,   Jules Verne characters, Phileas Fogg of London and French valet Passepartout, attempt to circumnavigate the world in 80 days on a £20,000 wager (equal to £1,324,289 (approximately $2.2 million )) in today's terms. The Verne book and imaginary trip marked the start of an age of  global tourism.   It suggested that anyone could sit down, draw up a schedule, buy tickets and travel around the world. Prior to this, the experience of this kind of travel had been the exclusive territory of explorers and adventurers.



Of course, today Phileas could have done it much faster.  The average radius of the Earth is 3,959 miles; the fastest time traveled around the world by flight is 23.4 hours. But around the world in 80 seconds?  Filmmakers Romain Pergeaux & Alex Profit have done it in a Youtube video project completed in only 3 weeks.   Created as  a tribute to the  Jules Verne's book "Le tour du monde en 80 jours" is a quick motion slide show taking the viewer to London, Cairo, Mumbay, Hong Kong, Tokyo, San Francisco, New York and back to London .  If you can't travel around the world physically, this virtual 80 second one  is worth the watch.

The making of the video, pictures of the trip and an interview of Alex Profit can be viewed at  http://www.tourdumonde80.fr

*the air-balloon was added for the movie, was not part of the original novels