How many machines?

[Andy120290]

I know that there are Tripods, Handling Machines, and Flying Machines. Since I haven't had the chance to read the book yet, I just wanted to know, are there any other machines in the book?

[Commandingtripod]

There is the digging machine.

[Andy120290]

Why did the Martians want to dig?

[Commandingtripod]

From memory, they were mining aluminim with which they would construct more Tripods, Handling Machines etc to supplement those from the original invasion force.

[Lensman]

There was an automated digging machine (end of II-2) and a machine which processed dirt (or ore) into aluminium ingots (II-3).

Also the sensor tower that appeared just before the Heat-Ray's first appearance (I-5), and the Black Smoke launchers (I-15).

And the Heat-Ray might be considered a separate machine, altho attached to the Tripods.

Assuming all the cylinders carried the same things, each carried five Martians, at least one complete but disassembled Tripod, and at least one complete handling machine, probably fully assembled before landing. (I presume they used the Handling Machine to assemble the Tripod.) Plus at least one ore processor and at least one digging machine. Of course there were other machines never described. "...certain fresh appliances that stood in an orderly manner about the cylinder. The second handling-machine was now completed, and was busy serving one of the novel contrivances..." (II-3)

It seems fairly certain that at least some components of most of the Tripods and handling-machines were made of aluminium and other materials from Earth. It is also stated that at least parts of the Flying Machine were constructed here. It also seems logical to believe that there were critical, hard-to-manufacture components of these machines which were brought from Mars. For instance, the power plants and Heat-Rays of the Tripods may very well have been difficult or impossible to manufacture with the limited time and resources available to the handling-machines in the pits. Likewise, it seems likely the Black Smoke cannisters were made up in advance.

Overall, I'd guess that any large metallic parts, such as the legs and bodies of the Tripods, were made of Earth materials. The ore processor clearly was making aluminium ingots, and from the description it seems likely that the legs and main body of the Tripods were made of aluminium. However, the "hood" of one Tripod was described as "brazen", possibly indicating it was manufactured on Mars (but see below). We don't know how big that was-- it only needed to cover one Martian and his controls-- so may have been rather small in comparison to the entire Tripod.

Note the cylinders disappeared from the pits. This suggests they were broken up, melted down and used to manufacture other items. Considering the massive size of the cylinders, it may very well be that between the "yellow metal" of the cylinders and the aluminium processed from digging, that was all the material the Martians needed to make the rest of the machines they needed for the first stage of the invasion. The yellow metal of the cylinders might have been mixed with aluminium to produce the "brazen" color which one Tripod's hood possessed. Or not, of course.

[theredweed]

andy120290 said:

Why did the Martians want to dig?

They need some more coal, to warm up their bloody mary's

[Thunder Child]

Although the hood indeed had to cover only 1 Martian, the words of the artillery man suggest that the hood is in fact very large:

"Giants in armour, sir. Hundred feet high. Three legs and a body like 'luminium, with a mighty great head in a hood, sir."

From Chapter Twelve - What I Saw of the Destruction of Weybridge and Shepperton

[Thunder Child]

And I find the words "a mighty great head IN a hood, sir." rather interesting...

[mctoddridesagain]

thunderchild3 said:

And I find the words "a mighty great head IN a hood, sir." rather interesting...

...by which I assume you imply that the hood was actually quite small.

However, a more pertinent quote is from 'At The Window', when the Artilleryman first describes the fight with the first Martian group:

...it was said the first party of Martians were crawling slowly towards their second cylinder under cover of a metal shield.

A party of Martians implies more than one...

[Poyks]

mctoddridesagain said:

thunderchild3 said:

And I find the words "a mighty great head IN a hood, sir." rather interesting...

...by which I assume you imply that the hood was actually quite small.

However, a more pertinent quote is from 'At The Window', when the Artilleryman first describes the fight with the first Martian group:

...it was said the first party of Martians were crawling slowly towards their second cylinder under cover of a metal shield.

A party of Martians implies more than one...

I've always thought that the fighting machines contained only one martian each.

From the Weybridge and Shepperton chapter; "The living intelligence, the Martian within the hood, was slain and splashed to the four winds of heaven, and the Thing was now but a mere intricate device of metal whirling to destruction."

And from Dead London; "Wondering still more at all that I had seen, I pushed on towards Primrose Hill. Far away, through a gap in the trees, I saw a second Martian, as motionless as the first, standing in the park towards the Zoological Gardens, and silent." The machine itself is described as a single martian.

It seems to me that the martians under the cover used it as a shield as a means of protection during transit, and would construct further machines thereon.

[Lensman]

It's clearly stated that the Martians "wore" the Tripods like we would wear a suit of clothes. Altho in today's world, it may be more appropriate to think of them as powered exoskeletons.

However, the "dish-cover" crawling along from the first cylinder which landed to the second was not a completed Tripod, and it may be that more than one Martian accompanied it to work on it on the way. Perhaps one Martian controlling a handling machine (how else could it have been dragged along?) and a second Martian inside at the controls. It's even possible there were *two* fully assembled handling machines inside each cylinder (or at least the first one) and so possibly there were two handling machines dragging the "dish cover", or possibly one dragging it while the other worked at finishing the Tripod to the point it could "stagger up" (as it did later) and walk on its own.

[Bayne]

[glow=red,2,300]Weren't the feeding operations done under the hood of one of the machines? I guess this means that a machine needs only one pilot but can carry several.
[/glow]

[Poyks]

lensman said:

It's clearly stated that the Martians "wore" the Tripods like we would wear a suit of clothes. Altho in today's world, it may be more appropriate to think of them as powered exoskeletons.

However, the "dish-cover" crawling along from the first cylinder which landed to the second was not a completed Tripod, and it may be that more than one Martian accompanied it to work on it on the way. Perhaps one Martian controlling a handling machine (how else could it have been dragged along?) and a second Martian inside at the controls. It's even possible there were *two* fully assembled handling machines inside each cylinder (or at least the first one) and so possibly there were two handling machines dragging the "dish cover", or possibly one dragging it while the other worked at finishing the Tripod to the point it could "stagger up" (as it did later) and walk on its own.

"Later this shield staggered up on tripod legs and became the first of the fighting-machines I had seen."

I like that theory Lensman, the martians themselves couldn't possibly move the "dish" under their own very restricted power.

bayne said:

[glow=red,2,300]Weren't the feeding operations done under the hood of one of the machines? I guess this means that a machine needs only one pilot but can carry several.
[/glow]

Not sure about that one Bayne <the sound of Poyks flicking through pages>

"For an instant he was clearly visible. He was a stout, ruddy, middle-aged man, well dressed; three days before, he must have been walking the world, a man of considerable consequence. I could see his staring eyes and gleams of light on his studs and watch chain. He vanished behind the mound, and for a moment there was silence. And then began a shrieking and a sustained and cheerful hooting from the Martians." The martians appear to feed without the assistance of a machine.

lensman said:

It seems fairly certain that at least some components of most of the Tripods and handling-machines were made of aluminium and other materials from Earth.

I've always liked the irony that most of the martian machines were constructed using Earth materials.

[Lensman]

From the end of II-2: "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 of its own..."

Well that seems fairly self-explanatory-- the cylinder in question had at least one disassembled handling-machine inside it when it arrived. Unless you think the Martians used their own feeble strength to assemble the first handling machine in the first cylinder that arrived, that suggests each cylinder contains at least *two* handling machines, one assembled and one disassembled.

[Poyks]

A previous paragraph also backs that up....

"The cylinder was already opened in the centre of the pit, and on the farther edge of the pit, amid the smashed and gravel-heaped shrubbery, one of the great fighting-machines, deserted by its occupant, stood stiff and tall against the evening sky. At first I scarcely noticed the pit and the cylinder, although it has been convenient to describe them first, on account of the extraordinary glittering mechanism I saw busy in the excavation, and on account of the strange creatures that were crawling slowly and painfully across the heaped mould near it."

It's safe to assume that the fighting machine mentioned has rendezvoused with the cylinder.

Incidentally, "one of the great fighting-machines, deserted by its occupant, stood stiff and tall against the evening sky." also reiterates the 'one machine, one martian' theory.

[Lensman]

Re the relationship between the Tripods and the Martian feeding, which bears on how big the hood has to be, let's look at the feeding scene quoted above (from II-3) in more detail:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The twilight had now come, the stars were little and faint, but the pit was illuminated by the flickering green fire that came from the aluminium-making. The whole picture was a flickering scheme of green gleams and shifting rusty black shadows, strangely trying to the eyes. Over and through it all went the bats, heeding it not at all. The sprawling Martians were no longer to be seen, the mound of blue-green powder had risen to cover them from sight, and a fighting-machine, with its legs contracted, crumpled, and abbreviated, stood across the corner of the pit. And then, amid the clangour of the machinery, came a drifting suspicion of human voices, that I entertained at first only to dismiss.

I crouched, watching this fighting-machine closely, satisfying myself now for the first time that the hood did indeed contain a Martian. As the green flames lifted I could see the oily gleam of his integument and the brightness of his eyes. And suddenly I heard a yell, and saw a long tentacle reaching over the shoulder of the machine to the little cage that hunched upon its back. Then something--something struggling violently--was lifted high against the sky, a black, vague enigma against the starlight; and as this black object came down again, I saw by the green brightness that it was a man. For an instant he was clearly visible. He was a stout, ruddy, middle-aged man, well dressed; three days before, he must have been walking the world, a man of considerable consequence. I could see his staring eyes and gleams of light on his studs and watch chain. He vanished behind the mound, and for a moment there was silence. And then began a shrieking and a sustained and cheerful hooting from the Martians.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So one Martian was in the Tripod, and apparently used one of the Tripod's tentacles to grab the victim out of the basket on the Tripod's back, then lowered the man to a group of waiting Martians, which group seems to have been behind a "mound of blue-green powder" which apparently was the results of the Martians mining for aluminium ore.

It *seems* to me that this group of Martians was not inside the Tripod, although perhaps that's open to debate.

[Poyks]

I can see where Bayne was coming from, but as you say, it seems that the FM was just moving the human "food" from its collection basket and into the pit. The mound of powder definately does read as the by-product of the aluminium production.

"As the green flames lifted I could see the oily gleam of his integument and the brightness of his eyes." As a matter of interest, the visible martian within the hood could explain the "mighty great head in a hood" as well.

thunderchild3 said:

"Giants in armour, sir. Hundred feet high. Three legs and a body like 'luminium, with a mighty great head in a hood, sir."

From Chapter Twelve - What I Saw of the Destruction of Weybridge and Shepperton

That discussion also reminds me of this book cover..

[Lensman]

Wow, I've never seen that book cover before, not even at Dr. Zeus' site!

Yeah, if the Martians appear to be "all head" and they're "the size, perhaps, of a bear" (I-4), that would be a "mightly great head" all right.

[mctoddridesagain]

lensman said:

Wow, I've never seen that book cover before, not even at Dr. Zeus' site!

For an Official WOTW Online Geek, you haven't been looking hard enough... ;D

Here it is at Chez Zeus:

drzeus.best.vwh.net/wotw/0103.html