Exploration of the Moon invention of the telescope, an increasing number of people began to recognise the Moon as a sphere, though many believed that it was "perfectly smooth". In 1609, Galileo Galilei drew one of the first telescopic drawings of the Moon in his book and noted that it was not smooth but had mountains and craters. Later in the 17th century, Giovanni Battista Riccioli and Francesco Maria Grimaldi drew a map of the Moon and gave many craters the names they still have today. On maps, the dark parts of the Moon's surface were called "maria" (singular "mare") or seas, and the
A Trip to the Moon him for "A Trip to the Moon", Méliès credited Jules Verne's novels "From the Earth to the Moon" (1865) and "Around the Moon" (1870). Cinema historians, the mid-20th-century French writer Georges Sadoul first among them, have frequently suggested H. G. Wells's "The First Men in the Moon" (1901), a French translation of which was published a few months before Méliès made the film, as another likely influence. Sadoul argued that the first half of the film (up to the shooting of the projectile) is derived from Verne and that the second half (the travelers' adventures on and in the moon)