Leyden ball Leyden ball A Leyden ball is a fictional bullet used in the nineteenth century Jules Verne science fiction novel, "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea". It contains a capacitance charge of electrical energy, which discharges instantaneously upon the bullet's impact. A similar, but more complex non-lethal electronic weapon, meant to disable people, has been developed for police use in the modern day. In his 1870 science fiction classic "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea", Jules Verne wrote about a hunting expedition using a very unusual form of bullet: the balls sent by this gun are not ordinary balls, but little
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea publisher, Pierre-Jules Hetzel, who is known to be responsible for many serious changes in Verne's books. In the original text the mysterious captain was a Polish nobleman, avenging his family who were killed by the Russians in retaliation for the captain's taking part in the Polish January Uprising of 1863. As France was at the time allied with the Russian Empire, the target for Nemo's wrath was changed to France's old enemy, the British Empire, to avoid political trouble. Professor Pierre Aronnax does not suspect Nemo's origins, as these were explained only later, in Verne's next book. What remained in