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Post by mctoddridesagain on Jun 15, 2005 9:37:05 GMT
But that may merely be rhetorical, like saying "That fish I caught, it was bigger than the Titanic!" PEDANT ALERT! PEDANT ALERT! The Clock Tower (aka Big Ben, though that is really the name of the main bell within which strikes the chimes) at the Palace of Westminster isn't a steeple.
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Post by Spirit of Man on Jun 15, 2005 14:53:54 GMT
I was just pointing out that Jeff doesnt give the FM's any specific height, allowing for artistic license when describing it I wonder how the SS tripods will measure up on that scale, would be interesting to see......once somebody has sized them up
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Post by mctoddridesagain on Jun 15, 2005 20:41:03 GMT
Ah, well, that Jeff Wayne, eh? The scamp... As for Spielberg's tripods, I wager that they'll be bloody huge, as tall as 23 London buses (double-decker) or 6 bendy-buses piled end-on, or the same height as 642 standard pint glasses piled up. That's about equal to 178 Daily Mirrors, or 0.4 football pitches. At a guess.
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Post by beecus on Jun 17, 2005 5:39:01 GMT
Didn't the book mention something about their height's being adjustable?
Maybe when they were first seen they were actually only 100ft, maybe they extended even further in London itself?
For starters, lets think about how the martians got inside the machines?
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Post by mctoddridesagain on Jun 17, 2005 10:35:47 GMT
Didn't the book mention something about their height's being adjustable? Maybe when they were first seen they were actually only 100ft, maybe they extended even further in London itself? For starters, lets think about how the martians got inside the machines? Wells’ descriptions contain contradictions, that is apart from when they are being fundamentally vague. Hence the bewildering array of interpretations of the machines – had Wells been more detailed and precise, the variety would have been less. We should hardly be surprised at this imprecision, however – after all, Wells was writing a story, not an instruction manual for engineers. The first description is from Chapter 10, ‘In the Storm’: ‘And this Thing I saw! How can I describe it? A monstrous tripod, higher than many houses, striding over the young pine trees, and smashing them aside in its career... 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.’A tripod ‘higher than many houses.’ No mention of specific figures, though, and one doesn’t get the impression that it is absurdly tall either. Note the comment describing the machine’s gait: ‘…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.’ For a machine to stride a hundred yards with each step, as some people have taken that sentence to mean, would make it enormously tall, and there is nothing else to indicate that the machines are that tall. There are two ways to interpret this: as artistic license, with the Narrator recounting his experiences as he felt them at the time, panic and dread exaggerating everything. Or that as he only sees the machine with each lightning flash, then between two consecutive flashes the machine may have taken many steps covering a hundred yards, and it is this cumulative distance that the Narrator perceives as having been covered almost instantaneously. In Chapter 11, ‘At the Window’, the Artilleryman tells the Narrator of his experiences, which includes this: ‘…it was said the first party of Martians were crawling slowly towards their second cylinder under cover of a metal shield. Later this shield staggered up on tripod legs and became the first of the fighting-machines I had seen.’This clearly implies that the machines can lower themselves close to the ground. One can imagine them having sufficiently flexible legs (perhaps with many joints) as to ‘squat’ or ‘crouch’ – this, incidentally, may answer the question of how the Martians board their machines – or they may have extendable leg sections. In ‘The Space Machine’, Christopher Priest depicts exactly this second possibility – his Martian machines have telescopic leg sections. The following passage, from Chapter 15, ‘What had happened in Surrey’, strengthens the impression, to me at any rate, that the machines can lower themselves such that the Martians can climb in and out: ‘The Martian who had been overthrown [by a lucky shell to the leg at St George’s Hill] crawled tediously out of his hood, a small brown figure, oddly suggestive from that distance of a speck of blight, and apparently engaged in the repair of his support. About nine he had finished, for his cowl was then seen above the trees again.’Obviously, to start with, the machine had been knocked over involuntarily; nevertheless, from a prone position, the machine has been able to get up again, and there is no indication that its companions assisted. And it would stand to reason that the machines must be able to get up from a prone position, if only because it would be pretty hazardous for such a vehicle to fall over and just lie there like a giant beetle on its back; it must be able to rescue itself. And if that is the case, then it stands to reason that the method by which the Martians board their machines is for the vehicle to squat or crouch down low enough for the Martian to climb in. There are, of course, more mentions of the machines which give clues as to size. In Chapter 14, ‘In London’, concerning the Narrator’s brother, we read: ‘They [the Martian tripods] 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.”'Here we have perhaps the only figure mentioned – ‘nearly a hundred feet high’. Of course, this is the brother’s recollection of the first strong rumours he heard in London. Nevertheless, it is the only figure mentioned. I believe that the machines could appear to be different heights depending on what they were doing at the time, say, squatting for a Martian to climb aboard, or stooping a little if moving deliberately, perhaps drawing themselves to their full height when striding at full pelt. I also believe that their maximum height is around a hundred feet, give or take a little. There is nothing to suggest any figure greatly in excess of that.
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Post by quaderni on Jun 19, 2005 1:21:01 GMT
One quick addition to your otherwise helpful list:
In the chapter on the ruined house, the narrator says that the legs are retractable and the FM can lower itself.
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Post by mctoddridesagain on Jun 19, 2005 8:44:36 GMT
Ah yes, thanks Quaderni, in Book 2, Chapter 3, 'The Days of Imprisonment', we read that:
'...a fighting-machine, with its legs contracted, crumpled, and abbreviated, stood across the corner of the pit.'
Note the use of the words contracted and crumpled, which could mean the legs have retractable sections, or they are folded up several times, or even a combination of both.
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Post by Refugee on Jul 20, 2005 21:07:14 GMT
According to the collector's dvd the Wayne tripods are 400ft high and thus can quite easily appear "above big ben"
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Post by mctoddridesagain on Jul 20, 2005 22:57:40 GMT
400 feet?!?!?!?!?!?! Well, that's far too big, quite frankly. If a hundred feet was good enough for HG, it's good enough for me. There is such a thing as having too much of a good thing...
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Ulaaaa!
Full Member
Ulaaaaa!
Posts: 102
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Post by Ulaaaa! on Jul 20, 2005 23:03:41 GMT
I just go by the fact that they may have ajustable heights. 100 ft might be the default setting but ajustable if need be.
Thats the explaination that lets me sleep at night anyway.
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Post by mctoddridesagain on Jul 20, 2005 23:15:35 GMT
Nah, I don't like that, 400 feet is silly! STOP THAT! IT'S SILLY! In any case, that's Jeff Wayne's album, not the novel.
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Post by Gnorn on Jul 20, 2005 23:25:46 GMT
*enter Neil voice*
You know, it was like the 70's you know? Like, everything was really huuuge!
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Post by Max on Jul 21, 2005 6:36:04 GMT
So its 100 foot for a Tripod then? Need to know - am embarking on another Tripod build and would like to know for working out the scale it'll be. BTW, that's one of the problems i had with the Spielberg version - too darn tall.
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Post by mctoddridesagain on Jul 21, 2005 8:54:38 GMT
*enter Neil voice* You know, it was like the 70's you know? Like, everything was really huuuge! Yeah, like Wagon Wheels, remember them, they were, like, the size of a wheeel... And Spangles, a family could live off one Spangle for a week... Anyway, back to tripods. In the book there is no mention of tripods being taller than a hundred feet (read this whole thread in detail). So, assuming a margin of error, if you want to make your model a bit taller, say, 120 feet, then fine. But 400 feet, or even 300 or 200, is right out. That's Jeff Wayne, not H G Wells.
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Post by Refugee on Jul 21, 2005 14:58:47 GMT
Are we to take 100ft as an exact measurement or the narators perception of the tripods? If we are to rely on his perception, considering his mental state at the time then it is, as mentioned above, likely to be out by 20 ft or so.
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Post by mctoddridesagain on Jul 21, 2005 15:18:59 GMT
Well, the novel purports to be written six years after the event, thus allowing Wells to give his Narrator both first-person immediacy, and an objective, after the fact omniscience. Hence the digressions into Martian physiology which wouldn't have been possible had it been written at the time (as it were). Thus, on the whole, one must assume the Narrator to have been checking his 'facts' as he wrote.
Nevertheless, at no point is a precise measurement given (pretty well all references to tripod height are quoted in this thread above). Thus, the point you make (about perception versus hard facts) is covered by my comment that 'around' 100 feet, give or take, say, 20 feet, would be okay.
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Post by Max on Jul 21, 2005 22:57:45 GMT
Okay, the Tripod i'm just about to start on will end up about 4 feet tall. If i make it 1/24th scale then that'd make it about 96 feet in reality. Fine by me and with the bonus of having it at 1/24th i can get quite easily pit crew figures for model racing cars and, with a bit of resculpting, i've got some inhabitants for the Martains basket.
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Post by mctoddridesagain on Jul 21, 2005 23:13:25 GMT
4 feet tall? Flippin' heck... Sounds absolutely fine to me! And I look forward to seeing it! Will it be to the same basic design as the one above, or will you try a new look?
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Post by Max on Jul 22, 2005 6:26:36 GMT
Nope, its another design again. It stems from me wanting to do one that's true to the book, in that the Martain's move under the cover of a shield which then rears up to be the first Tripod. So, i'm looking round for a suitable shield shape and realise my bedside lamp is just right. All i've got to do is build legs down and then the tentacles, Heat Ray and Basket. With the lamp being the size it is, the legs are gonna have to be about foor feet long. Should be nice and impressive when done but gawd knows where i'll put it.
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Post by mctoddridesagain on Jul 22, 2005 8:38:11 GMT
Ah, the shield... Should be interesting! I've been trying something like that myself. At home I've got some sketches (very rough) where I've tried to incorporate a shield. I have it at an angle, something like 45 degrees or so, with the hood (open) on a 'neck' type mechanism protruding through a hole - rather like the barrel of a field gun poking through the shield.
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