# HG Wells question **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [September 20, 2001, 12:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hg-wells-question/82709 "2001-09-20T00:56:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![dwtno](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/858c86/32.png) [@dwtno](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dwtno)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2001, 12:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hg-wells-question/82709/1 "2001-09-20T00:56:18Z")
I’m going to try this in ‘Cafe Society,’ though I suspect it might be just as appropriate for GQ. Regardless… I recall reading some time ago about a plan HG Wells and an entrepreneur hatched to create what would today be called ‘motion simulator rides’ based on Wells _Time Machine_ book. Paying customers would get into the Time Machine simulator and experience the rapid passing of days (flickering lights) and then be treated to famous scenes from history (painted tableaus or dioramas). The ride was never built, but I always found this precursor to modern amusment parks and virtual reality very interesting. The problem is I can’t seem to find a reference to this historical tidbit any longer. Does anyone else recall this plan and can anyone give me a cite to prove it was real? ---
**Author:** ![jab1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ee7513/32.png) [@jab1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jab1)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2001, 1:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hg-wells-question/82709/2 "2001-09-20T01:07:36Z")
I’ve heard this story too, but I can’t remember where I read it. ---
**Author:** ![bouv](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bc8723/32.png) [@bouv](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bouv)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2001, 4:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hg-wells-question/82709/3 "2001-09-20T04:48:43Z")
[HIJACK] Well, I don’t know anything about _that_, but I do know that some production company is making a _Time Machine_ movie with Jeremy Irons, I think. They did some filming right here in Troy, NY, because it has that “turn of the century feel.” In other words, Troy’s a dumpy ghetto town. Oh yeah! [/HIJACK] ---
**Author:** ![don\_t\_ask](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e68b1a/32.png) [@don\_t\_ask](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/don_t_ask)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2001, 5:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hg-wells-question/82709/4 "2001-09-20T05:00:02Z")
True enough > [@](#): > > Also appearing in this volume are “How To Construct A Time Machine,” by Alfred Jarry… and an intriguing excerpt from Terry Ramsaye’s history of the early cinema, “A Million and One Nights,” concerning Robert W. Paul. > > Paul patented a ‘virtual reality’ theme-park-style ride – in 1895. Based on the idea of presenting time travel using brand-new motion picture technology, the invention, according to Paul, “…consists of a platform, or platforms, each of which contains a suitable number of spectators and which may be enclosed at the sides after the spectators have taken their places… In order to create the impression of traveling, each platform may be suspended from cranks in shafts above the platform… placed so as to impart to the platform a gentle rocking motion, and may also be employed to cause the platform to travel bodily forward through a short space. The films or slides are prepared with the aid of the kinetograph or special camera, from made up characters performing on a stage…” > > Not bad, considering that the narrative movie was still nearly two decades away, and the platform-based thrill-park ride wouldn’t show up for nearly another hundred years! From [http://www.donbrockway.com/editions.htm](http://www.donbrockway.com/editions.htm) ---
**Author:** ![Santos\_L\_Halper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/santos_l_halper/32/1_2.png) [@Santos\_L\_Halper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Santos_L_Halper)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2001, 5:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hg-wells-question/82709/5 "2001-09-20T05:43:40Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by bouv \* > \*\*They did some filming right here in Troy, NY, because it has that “turn of the century feel.” \*\* Do you mean it reminds people of the year 2001, or is it the turn of some other century they’re going for? 🙂 Eric ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2001, 11:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hg-wells-question/82709/6 "2001-09-20T11:28:16Z")
I’ve read this too, and like the rest of you, I can’t remember where. I’ll have to check my reference books tonight. I feel reasonably certain that Wells’ friend was _not_ Alfred Jarry, the weird diminutive Frenchman who wrtote **Ubu Roi** and invented “pataphysics”. You can read about him in **The Big Book of Weirdos**. Philip Jose Farmer put him in his contribuition to “Tales of Ringworld”. ---
**Author:** ![Ukulele\_Ike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/df788c/32.png) [@Ukulele\_Ike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ukulele_Ike)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2001, 2:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hg-wells-question/82709/7 "2001-09-20T14:10:14Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by CalMeacham \* > \*\*Alfred Jarry, the weird diminutive Frenchman who wrote **Ubu Roi** and invented “pataphysics”. You can read about him in **The Big Book of Weirdos**. Philip Jose Farmer put him in his contribuition to “Tales of Ringworld”. \*\* Underground cartoonist-turned syndicated comic strip artist Bill Griffith also wrote comix stories about the little _shitr_, possibly because he was almost as bizarre as Zippy the Pinhead. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2001, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hg-wells-question/82709/8 "2001-09-20T20:53:03Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Santos L Halper \* > \*\* > > > [@](#): > > > > \*Originally posted by bouv \* > > \*\*They did some filming right here in Troy, NY, because it has that “turn of the century feel.” \*\* > > Do you mean it reminds people of the year 2001, or is it the turn of some other century they’re going for? 🙂 > > Eric \*\* You ever been to Troy? 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2001, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hg-wells-question/82709/9 "2001-09-23T23:43:05Z")
Found it. As **don’t ask** noted above, it was Robert Paul who collaborated with H.G. Wells on this. According to John Baxter’s **Science Fiction in the Cinema** (1970 – a wretched book, but sometimes a useful reference) Wells and Paul applied for a patent on October 24, 1895 for a device to duplicate the effects Wells had descbed in his novel **The Time Machine** a year earlier. “The plan might have worked had either man possessed the money to develop it. However, Wells moved on to minence as a writer and Paul to frustration and obscurity as a pioneer of the cinema.” ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2001, 1:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hg-wells-question/82709/10 "2001-10-08T01:26:43Z")
I don’t know if anyone cares about this anymore, but I’ve stumbled across a extraordinarily good reference on this point. Terry Ramsaye, in his book **A Million and One Nights** devotes an entire _chapter_ to Paul and Wells and this proto-interactive ride. The book was published in 1926, and re-issued in 1954. Chapter 12 is entitled “Paul and ‘The Time Machine’”. The bulk of the chapter has been reprinted in **Focus on the Science Fiction Film** , ed. William Johnon (Prentice-Hall, 1972). Ramsaye makes a very good case that Wells’ story was itself inspired by the newly-invented motion picture, that the descriptions he gives of things as seen from the Time Machine are the way they appear when movies are speeded up or ru backwards. Ramsaye also quotes Pauls patent, British patent #19984.