tabletop time machine
1890 ROUND THE WORLD WITH NELLIE BLY
A classic spiral game board for going around the world
Original box art
Nellie Bly, the real Phileas Fogg
Jules Verne published his adventure story Around the World in 80 Days in 1872. In it, English clubman Phileas Fogg achieves this feat on a wager of £20,000 (multiply by 100 for today’s equivalent), travelling by a variety of modes of transport, including hot-air balloon. The subject was self-evidently ideal material for a spiral race game patterned on the archetypal Game of Goose. First off the blocks was the German games company Ravensburger (Otto Maier Verlag), whose 1884 Reise um die Erde (Journey round the World) was its first published game. Six years later, on the opposite side of the world, the American company McLoughlin Brothers published Round the World with Nellie Bly. In fact, they published it twice, once in the form of a jigsaw puzzle which, when completed, formed the playing board.