From the Earth to the Moon

'From the Earth to the Moon' is a science fiction adventure novel by the French writer Jules Verne, published in 1865.
 It tells the story of the Baltimore Gun Club, a post-American Civil War society of weapons enthusiasts, and their attempts to build an enormous Columbiad space gun and launch three people — the Gun Club's president, his Philadelphian armor-making rival, and a French poet — in a projectile with the goal of a Moon landing. 
Five years later, Verne wrote a sequel called Around the Moon.