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 Fabulous World of Jules Verne additional high-profile admirers. "The New York Times" critic Howard Thompson found it "fresh, funny and highly imaginative," with "a marvelous eyeful of trick effects." Pauline Kael was similarly glowing, calling the film a "wonderful giddy science fantasy" and adding that Zeman "sustains the Victorian tone, with its delight in the magic of science, that makes Verne seem so playfully archaic." Charles Stinson of the "Los Angeles Times" began a highly positive review for the film by saying: ""The Fabulous World of Jules Verne" is precisely that. For once the title writers and the press agents have been found failing to