Re: War of the Worlds -- Martian Technology

John C wrote:

> Don't remember any airships in the book, but what can you do?  

Yes, Virginia, there *are* flying machines. Or at least, one.

 From the e-book version at
http://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/www/warworlds/warw.html

Everyone's got the tripod movement wrong :

"A monstrous tripod, higher than many houses, striding over the young 
pine trees, and smashing them aside in its career; a walking engine of 
glittering metal, striding now across the heather; articulate ropes of 
steel dangling from it, and the clattering tumult of its passage 
mingling with the riot of the thunder. A flash, and it came out vividly,

heeling over one way with two feet in the air, to vanish and reappear 
almost instantly as it seemed, with the next flash, a hundred yards 
nearer. Can you imagine a milking stool tilted and bowled violently 
along the ground?"

The legs *aren't articulated" when it moves in sprint mode.

Imagine a 3-legged barstool. Tilt it so it balances on one leg, then 
rotate it so another leg hits the ground, rotate more till it's balanced

on one leg again. Repeat every second, then scale up by a factor of 30.

The legs *are articulated* when it raises and lowers itself, and 
probably when it walks - it's described as "walking", "striding" etc.

"The knees of its foremost legs bent at the farther bank, and in another

moment it had raised itself to its full height again, close to the 
village of Shepperton."

They're about 30 metres tall, and move at 150 kp/h.

"They were described as 'vast spiderlike machines, nearly a hundred feet

high, capable of the speed of an express train, and able to shoot out a 
beam of intense heat.' "

The fastest Express trains of the period could do nearly 200 kp/h.

As for "Flying Machines"

"The sun sank into grey clouds, the sky flushed and darkened, the 
evening star trembled into sight. It was deep twilight when the captain 
cried out and pointed. My brother strained his eyes. Something rushed up

into the sky out of the greyness--rushed slantingly upward and very 
swiftly into the luminous clearness above the clouds in the western sky;

something flat and broad, and very large, that swept round in a vast 
curve, grew smaller, sank slowly, and vanished again into the grey 
mystery of the night. And as it flew it rained down darkness upon the
land."

The original illustrations in the Strand Magazine show something like an

enlarged Lillienthal glider, and are reminiscent of a Wright Flyer writ 
large - but hidden in darkness, its shape is only suggested.

The War Machines weren't the only Martian devices :

"The mechanism it certainly was that held my attention first. It was one

of those complicated fabrics that have since been called 
handling-machines, and the study of which has already given such an 
enormous impetus to terrestrial invention. As it dawned upon me first, 
it presented a sort of metallic spider with five jointed, agile legs, 
and with an extraordinary number of jointed levers, bars, and reaching 
and clutching tentacles about its body. Most of its arms were retracted,

but with three long tentacles it was fishing out a number of rods, 
plates, and bars which lined the covering and apparently strengthened 
the walls of the cylinder. These, as it extracted them, were lifted out 
and deposited upon a level surface of earth behind it.

Its motion was so swift, complex, and perfect that at first I did not 
see it as a machine, in spite of its metallic glitter. The 
fighting-machines were co-ordinated and animated to an extraordinary 
pitch, but nothing to compare with this. People who have never seen 
these structures, and have only the ill-imagined efforts of artists or 
the imperfect descriptions of such eye-witnesses as myself to go upon, 
scarcely realise that living quality.

I recall particularly the illustration of one of the first pamphlets to 
give a consecutive account of the war. The artist had evidently made a 
hasty study of one of the fighting-machines, and there his knowledge 
ended. He presented them as tilted, stiff tripods, without either 
flexibility or subtlety, and with an altogether misleading monotony of 
effect. The pamphlet containing these renderings had a considerable 
vogue, and I mention them here simply to warn the reader against the 
impression they may have created. They were no more like the Martians I 
saw in action than a Dutch doll is like a human being. To my mind, the 
pamphlet would have been much better without them."

As for wheels:

"And of their appliances, perhaps nothing is more wonderful to a man 
than the curious fact that what is the dominant feature of almost all 
human devices in mechanism is absent--the wheel is absent; among all the

things they brought to earth there is no trace or suggestion of their 
use of wheels. One would have at least expected it in locomotion. And in

this connection it is curious to remark that even on this earth Nature 
has never hit upon the wheel, or has preferred other expedients to its 
development. And not only did the Martians either not know of (which is 
incredible), or abstain from, the wheel, but in their apparatus 
singularly little use is made of the fixed pivot or relatively fixed 
pivot, with circular motions thereabout confined to one plane. Almost 
all the joints of the machinery present a complicated system of sliding 
parts moving over small but beautifully curved friction bearings. And 
while upon this matter of detail, it is remarkable that the long 
leverages of their machines are in most cases actuated by a sort of sham

musculature of the disks in an elastic sheath; these disks become 
polarised and drawn closely and powerfully together when traversed by a 
current of electricity. In this way the curious parallelism to animal 
motions, which was so striking and disturbing to the human beholder, was

attained. Such quasi-muscles abounded in the crablike handling-machine 
which, on my first peeping out of the slit, I watched unpacking the 
cylinder. It seemed infinitely more alive than the actual Martians lying

beyond it in the sunset light, panting, stirring ineffectual tentacles, 
and moving feebly after their vast journey across space."

Martians may also use Robots, or RPVs :

"When I looked again, the busy handling-machine had already put together

several of the pieces of apparatus it had taken out of the cylinder into

a shape having an unmistakable likeness to its own; and down on the left

a busy little digging mechanism had come into view, emitting jets of 
green vapour and working its way round the pit, excavating and embanking

in a methodical and discriminating manner. This it was which had caused 
the regular beating noise, and the rhythmic shocks that had kept our 
ruinous refuge quivering. It piped and whistled as it worked. So far as 
I could see, the thing was without a directing Martian at all."

They have mastered the extraction of Aluminium from Aluminium Silicate 
(clay)
"After a long time I ventured back to the peephole, to find that the 
new-comers had been reinforced by the occupants of no fewer than three 
of the fighting-machines. These last had brought with them certain fresh

appliances that stood in an orderly manner about the cylinder. The 
second handling-machine was now completed, and was busied in serving one

of the novel contrivances the big machine had brought. This was a body 
resembling a milk can in its general form, above which oscillated a 
pear-shaped receptacle, and from which a stream of white powder flowed 
into a circular basin below.

The oscillatory motion was imparted to this by one tentacle of the 
handling-machine. With two spatulate hands the handling-machine was 
digging out and flinging masses of clay into the pear-shaped receptacle 
above, while with another arm it periodically opened a door and removed 
rusty and blackened clinkers from the middle part of the machine. 
Another steely tentacle directed the powder from the basin along a 
ribbed channel towards some receiver that was hidden from me by the 
mound of bluish dust. From this unseen receiver a little thread of green

smoke rose vertically into the quiet air. As I looked, the 
handling-machine, with a faint and musical clinking, extended, 
telescopic fashion, a tentacle that had been a moment before a mere 
blunt projection, until its end was hidden behind the mound of clay. In 
another second it had lifted a bar of white aluminium into sight, 
untarnished as yet, and shining dazzlingly, and deposited it in a 
growing stack of bars that stood at the side of the pit. Between sunset 
and starlight this dexterous machine must have made more than a hundred 
such bars out of the crude clay, and the mound of bluish dust rose 
steadily until it topped the side of the pit."

Note that at the time, Aluminium was so expensive they used it on top of

the Washington Monument instead of the *cheaper* silver.

Finally... more about the Flying Machine:

"Across the pit on its farther lip, flat and vast and strange, lay the 
great flying-machine with which they had been experimenting upon our 
denser atmosphere when decay and death arrested them. Death had come not

a day too soon."

-- 
Alan & Carmel Brain
http://aebrain.blogspot.com
mailto:aebrain@webone.com.au