Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea as an inhabitant of British Colonial India, "is an inhabitant of an oppressed country". Verne took the name "Nautilus" from one of the earliest successful submarines, built in 1800 by Robert Fulton, who later invented the first commercially successful steamboat. Fulton's submarine was named after the paper nautilus because it had a sail. Three years before writing his novel, Jules Verne also studied a model of the newly developed French Navy submarine "Plongeur" at the 1867 Exposition Universelle, which inspired him for his definition of the "Nautilus". The breathing apparatus used by "Nautilus" divers is depicted as an untethered version
The Mysterious Island (1929 film) article included stills showing the original 1926 undersea denizens and the redesigned version which actually appeared in the film. Footage directed by Maurice Tourneur and Benjamin Christensen in 1927 was incorporated into the final 1929 version. The film is loosely based on the back-story given for Captain Nemo in the novel "The Mysterious Island", and might more properly be thought of as a prequel to "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea". It is the story of Count Dakkar (Captain Nemo's real name is revealed to be Prince Dakkar in "The Mysterious Island"), how he built his submarine, how he was