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Post by Leatherhead on Mar 4, 2005 16:20:03 GMT
After the war, what kind of technology would England be left with? Computers for example? How much of that technology could they actually understand? How fast could they advance because of it?
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Post by lanceradvanced on Mar 4, 2005 17:22:10 GMT
After the war, what kind of technology would England be left with? Computers for example? How much of that technology could they actually understand? How fast could they advance because of it? Depends on weather there's a surviving martian engineer or not... In "Scarlet Traces" because they -did- find one surviving martian (he build himself an air/water filter, as the others died) 10 years after the war the english have mechanical walking cabs, (and fire trucks, and calvary) aircraft, Heat Ray based furnaces, totally automated industry, televisions, pidgeon hunting robots in the parks and are on top world wide because of their monopoly on the Heat Ray, and are about to counterattack mars. Personally, I think back engineering the machines would give a good idea of a lot of the mechanical priniples used in the martian technology, the psuedo muscles, and manufactuing techniques, plus aerodynamic principles, thoug this might be handicapped by the lack of appropriate manufacturing technology. Automata might become far more common, but I'm not so sure about computers and communication technology, simply because it seems that the Martian -brain- would have filled in for those technologies, resulting in a lack of technologies to use there. But that it might take quite a while for some of the -physics- principles involved (fusion/fission, superconductivity, fuel cells, advanced organic chemisty, to be fully understood in utilized, though the martian tech would yeald a lot of signposts that say -this is possible- Some of the tech might also be put to use, -without- trying to understand it fully, too, but in limited quanties (like the guys on SG1 use the blast staffs and zat guns without -building- them)
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Post by NarmGreyrunner on Mar 4, 2005 18:03:35 GMT
Interestingly enough, and this would make a great backdrop for a story, but I can easily see England coming out on top of all it's colonial conflicts.
I can just see the english going back to Zululand, and when the Zulus attack Rorke's Drift again, the 24th pulls out a heat ray. and cooks'em all up.
Imagine how that would have changed the course of history.
Especially if the English had no intention of sharing their prizes.
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Post by Topaz on Mar 4, 2005 21:57:04 GMT
Lancer hits it on the head here - reverse-engineering a lot of the Martian equipment would require manufacturing technologies or fundamental science that was unavailable to Victorian England.
Wells has the Narrator write himself that research into the Heat-Ray was given up after "fearful calamities" at the labs involved.
Computers would be one of the last technologies the Victorians could pick up. Making a microprocessor requires knowledge of transistor theory, electrical properties of semiconductor materials, microlithography manufacturing, and on and on.
Even if the Victorians could get a Martian microprocessor out of whatever they used for protection, examination under even the best microscopes of the day would reveal little more than interesting patterns of dots and traces on the chip. They wouldn't know what they were looking at.
Then there's software, operating systems, all of which require advanced information theory...
I think we could reverse-engineer some of the basic mechanical devices, and even the musculature of the Fighting and Handling machines, but without computers to coordinate the movements, the knowledge would only work as a replacement for existing hydraulic systems.
It's also possible they could learn a lot about flying from examining the Flying Machine, but unless they were able to develop the theory from their observations (and a suitable powerplant) they'd be reduced to immitation.
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Post by Lensman on Mar 5, 2005 3:39:43 GMT
After the war, what kind of technology would England be left with? Computers for example? How much of that technology could they actually understand? How fast could they advance because of it? We are talking about Wells' novel, aren't we? Is there anything in the novel which suggests the Martians had any sort of transistor-based technology? I don't see any indication of that, let alone digital computers. Back in the "pulp" era of super-science "scientifiction," there was an assumption that "What physical science can devise and synthesize, physical science can analyze and duplicate." -- E.E. Smith, First Lensman, chapter 2. But I read a very interesting article about the semi-conductor technology used in WW II era radio proximity fuses. The scientist-author said it would have been impossible to figure out the manufacturing process just by attempting to analyze it. So yeah, almost certainly some of the Martian tech can't be reverse-engineered. But some of it could be, and-- as the saying goes-- realizing that something is possible is half the battle. I'm not so sure England would have been able to use the Martian technology to achieve even greater world domination than they already had. London was devastated, and that surely would have led to a severe depression, if not complete economic collapse. Other nations may have been in a better position to take advantage of the new technology, and race ahead. The heat ray vs. the Zulus would have led to a different result? Maybe yes, maybe no. The British used small units with superior technology and training to hold their empire and put down native unrest. With even higher tech, there would have been the temptation to use even smaller units. A large enuff "human wave" attack from multiple directions could take out even a heat ray projector.
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Post by lanceradvanced on Mar 5, 2005 15:12:22 GMT
I'm not so sure England would have been able to use the Martian technology to achieve even greater world domination than they already had. London was devastated, and that surely would have led to a severe depression, if not complete economic collapse. London was more -emptied- than it was devastated, and it was more of a urban area than a major industrial area, farming would be pretty much untouched, the martians might not have reached industrial centers such as Liverpool or Southampton, the population of Oxford and Cambridge would have had ample warning to flee, saving the "best and brightest" The martians spent most of their efforts on key logistic elements, which were easily enough repaired to get train service running back to the heart of the invasion within a week... If they manage to get their hands on it, I'm sure the Royal Navy would object to any invasion attempts..
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Post by quaderni on Mar 5, 2005 20:40:42 GMT
We are talking about Wells' novel, aren't we? Is there anything in the novel which suggests the Martians had any sort of transistor-based technology? I don't see any indication of that, let alone digital computers. I'll respectfully offer another interpretation here. Wells suggests, in veiled references, that the Martian invasion has hugely altered the course of human affairs on earth. Not just for technology, but also for socio-political organisation. As for the technology, note the following passage from Bk. II, ch. 9: "I learned nothing [from this first edition of the Daily Mail] except that already in one the examination of the Martian mechanisms had yielded astonishing results. Among other things, the article assured me what I did not believe at the the time: that the 'Secret of Flying,' was discovered" (Broadview edn, p. 186). Other military technologies - the heat-ray and the black smoke - were not puzzled out. As for microprocessors, I think this was usually beyond Wells's scope in the book (though some French scientists, by the mid-19th-century, had hypothesised micro-processors). By contrast, Wells radically re-imagines machines and evolved life in ways that are fascinating and provocative; but these type of information-processing systems, so it seems to me, were not in his text.
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Post by Lensman on Mar 6, 2005 4:24:01 GMT
London was more -emptied- than it was devastated, and it was more of a urban area than a major industrial area, Good point; I should have said "the population of London was devastated." There were an awful lot of people killed by black smoke, and not just in London. And it's not just a matter of the actual people killed. It's the psychological effect of England having lost a war fought on its own soil, and the breakdown of governmental authority which happened in the novel. I didn't mean the other nations would come in and steal the Martians' machines; I meant that after the scientists had done their investigations and released their findings, other nations not forced to recover from economic depression or collapse would have been in a better economic position to exploit the new findings and develop new technology. Quaderni posted: Absolutely correct. In my post I concentrated on the difficulties of reverse engineering, but certainly they did gain some important advances from it. And if it forced humans to re-think their nationalism (even jingoism) in the face of a threat from inhuman outsiders, that's all to the good too.
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