countdown, "Frau im Mond", and "Destination Moon"

[miriam_e]

As part of another rabbithole I went down this morning, I downloaded Fritz Lang's 1929 movie, "Frau im Mond" (The Woman in the Moon) in high resolution.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFGATob5w5c

Why?

I learned (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35ncLbpNbTk) that it was the first time anybody thought of preceding a rocket launch with a countdown. That was a surprise to me. I'd previously thought that was an innovation by Robert Heinlein in his script for George Pal's movie "Destination Moon". I don't have the movie and couldn't find it online, but the comicbook adapted from the movie is at the Internet Archive:

https://archive.org/details/fawcett_Destination_Moon_1950
(Get the comicbook cbr format, not the low resolution, almost unreadable pdf)

Also at the InternetArchive is the half-hour long radioplay of Heinlein's story:

http://archive.org/download/Dimension-X/Dimx_e012_DestinationMoon.mp3

I already have the story (which Heinlein adapted from his screenplay), but that was ages ago and I can't remember the source.