The Time Machine by H. G. Wells pdf download

Book: The Time Machine

Author: H. G. Wells

Release Date: October 2, 2004

Last Updated: January 14, 2018

Language: English.

(✍️ This article is collected from this book 📚 (All Credit To Go Real Hero The Author of this book 📖) 🙏 Please buy this book hardcopy from anyway.)

🔍In This Book________________________

thought of it. It's plain enough, and helps the paradox delightfully. We cannot see it, nor can we appreciate this machine, any more than we can the spoke of a wheel spinning, or a bullet flying through the air. If it is travelling through time fifty times or a hundred times faster than we are, if it gets through a minute while we get through a second, the impression it creates will of course be only one-fiftieth or one-hundredth of what it would make if it were not travelling in time. That's plain enough.' He passed his hand through the space in which the machine had been. `You see?' he said, laughing.

We sat and stared at the vacant table for a minute or so. Then the Time Traveller asked us what we thought of it all.

`It sounds plausible enough to-night,' said the Medical Man; 'but wait until to-morrow. Wait for the common sense of the morning.'

`Would you like to see the Time Machine itself?' asked the Time Traveller. And therewith, taking the lamp in his hand, he led the way down.

🧾Introduction_____________________________

The Time Traveller (for so it will be convenient to speak of him) was

expounding a recondite matter to us. His pale grey eyes shone and twinkled, and

his usually pale face was flushed and animated. The fire burnt brightly, and the

soft radiance of the incandescent lights in the lilies of silver caught the bubbles

that flashed and passed in our glasses. Our chairs, being his patents, embraced

and caressed us rather than submitted to be sat upon, and there was that

luxurious after-dinner atmosphere, when thought runs gracefully free of the

trammels of precision. And he put it to us in this way—marking the points with a

lean forefinger—as we sat and lazily admired his earnestness over this new

paradox (as we thought it) and his fecundity.

“You must follow me carefully. I shall have to controvert one or two ideas that

are almost universally accepted. The geometry, for instance, they taught you at

school is founded on a misconception.”

“Is not that rather a large thing to expect us to begin upon?” said Filby, an

argumentative person with red hair.

“I do not mean to ask you to accept anything without reasonable ground for it.

You will soon admit as much as I need from you. You know of course that a

mathematical line, a line of thickness nil, has no real existence. They taught you

that? Neither has a mathematical plane. These things are mere abstractions.”

“That is all right,” said the Psychologist.

“Nor, having only length, breadth, and thickness, can a cube have a real

existence.”

“There I object,” said Filby. “Of course a solid body may exist. All real things

—”

“So most people think. But wait a moment. Can an instantaneous cube exist?”

“Don’t follow you,” said Filby.

“Can a cube that does not last for any time at all, have a real existence?”

Filby became pensive. “Clearly,” the Time Traveller proceeded, “any real

body must have extension in four directions: it must have Length, Breadth,

Thickness, and—Duration. But through a natural infirmity of the flesh, which I

will explain to you in a moment, we incline to overlook this fact. 

There are

really four dimensions, three which we call the three planes of Space, and a

fourth, Time. There is, however, a tendency to draw an unreal distinction

between the former three dimensions and the latter, because it happens that our

consciousness moves intermittently in one direction along the latter from the

beginning to the end of our lives.”

“That,” said a very young man, making spasmodic efforts to relight his cigar

over the lamp; “that . . . very clear indeed.”

“Now, it is very remarkable that this is so extensively overlooked,” continued

the Time Traveller, with a slight accession of cheerfulness. “Really this is what

is meant by the Fourth Dimension, though some people who talk about the

Fourth Dimension do not know they mean it. It is only another way of looking at

Time. There is no difference between Time and any of the three dimensions of

Space except that our consciousness moves along it. But some foolish people

have got hold of the wrong side of that idea. You have all heard what they have

to say about this Fourth Dimension?”

“I have not,” said the Provincial Mayor.

“It is simply this. That Space, as our mathematicians have it, is spoken of as

having three dimensions, which one may call Length, Breadth, and Thickness,

and is always definable by reference to three planes, each at right angles to the

others. But some philosophical people have been asking why three dimensions

particularly—why not another direction at right angles to the other three?—and

have even tried to construct a Four-Dimensional geometry. Professor Simon

Newcomb was expounding this to the New York Mathematical Society only a

month or so ago. You know how on a flat surface, which has only two

dimensions, we can represent a figure of a three-dimensional solid, and similarly

they think that by models of three dimensions they could represent one of four—

if they could master the perspective of the thing. See?”

“I think so,” murmured the Provincial Mayor; and, knitting his brows, he

lapsed into an introspective state, his lips moving as one who repeats mystic

words. “Yes, I think I see it now,” he said after some time, brightening in a quite

transitory manner.

“Well, I do not mind telling you I have been at work upon this geometry of

Four Dimensions for some time. Some of my results are curious. For instance,

here is a portrait of a man at eight years old, another at fifteen, another at

seventeen, another at twenty-three, and so on. All these are evidently sections, as

it were, Three-Dimensional representations of his Four-Dimensioned being,

which is a fixed and unalterable thing.

“Scientific people,” proceeded the Time Traveller, after the pause required for

the proper assimilation of this, “know very well that Time is only a kind of

Space. Here is a popular scientific diagram, a weather record. This line I trace

with my finger shows the movement of the barometer. Yesterday it was so high,

yesterday night it fell, then this morning it rose again, and so gently upward to

here. Surely the mercury did not trace this line in any of the dimensions of Space

generally recognised? But certainly it traced such a line, and that line, therefore,

we must conclude, was along the Time-Dimension.”

“But,” said the Medical Man, staring hard at a coal in the fire, “if Time is ©read more from this book....