So the Royal Mint celebrated the life of H.G. Wells, with a 2 pound coin, featuring the Invisible Man in a top hat in the foreground, and a Martian Tri-pod in the background.
The UK’s new HG Wells coin features numerous errors – including a four-legged tripod (msn.com)
Giving his “Invisible Man” a top hat just means that someone never read the story, but giving a tri-pod four legs means that nobody, from the designer, to the commission that approved the design, to the people that made the coin…not a one of them could count to three.
“Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three.”
Also, “And another flaw was spotted by Roberts, who said: “The legend written around the rim of the coin, ‘GOOD BOOKS ARE THE WAREHOUSES OF IDEAS’, is (though it’s sometimes attributed to Wells by various internet quote-sites) not an actual quotation by Wells.””
Well they counted to three allright, and then they got carried away and kept going. Could happen to anyone when you’re having fun, really. Numbers are weird. Goethe said it beautifully in Faust:
This you must ken!
From one make ten,
And two let be,
Make even three,
Then rich you’ll be.
Skip o’er the four!
From five and six,
The Witch’s tricks,
Make seven and eight,
'Tis finished straight;
And nine is one,
And ten is none,
That is the witch’s one-time-one!
Which I shamelessly copied and adapted, to be sure.
PS: Chris Costello, the designer, has been living in the Boston area for over 30 years, but H.G. Wells was English. Communication must have been difficult during confinement with all this pandemic going round. I wonder if this is the same Chris Costello who designed the Papirus font.
[e-mail]We don’t know how it is in Boston, but over here in Great Britain “Tri” means “Three”. Would you mind correcting your submission to reflect this fact? Thank you.[/e-mail]
I remember being in a high school geography class, when a girl in the class who was known to be ditzy suddenly had some epiphany about triangles and about how tri means three!
I will write one hundred times:
“I know that nobody in the internet understands sarcasm, not even somebody who calls himself Czarcasm.”
“I know that nobody in the internet understands sarcasm, not even somebody who calls himself Czarcasm.”
“I know that nobody in the internet understands sarcasm, not even somebody who calls himself Czarcasm.”
“I know that nobody in the internet understands sarcasm, not even somebody who calls himself Czarcasm.”
…
or maybe it’s me?
…
“I know that nobody in the internet understands sarcasm, not even somebody who calls himself Czarcasm.”
“I know that nobody in the internet understands sarcasm, not even somebody who calls himself Czarcasm.”
"I know that nobody in the internet …
You should have seen the first design with a Time Machine shaped like a police box.
There could have been such an amusing typo.
And at times an accurate one.
Last year my gf showed me a cute little cartoon her agency had made for a client (she’s in advertising).
After viewing it, I uncomfortably pointed out a minor factual error in the ad. She accused me of being pedantic, was angry, and the subject was dropped.
A month later she told me the client loved the cartoon, but then pulled it because they were getting too many emails pointing out the error I’d noticed.
Aren’t the only people who’d buy these coins the exact individuals who’d notice “subtle” errors?
Well, if they didn’t put a top hat on him, most people would think that they just depicted a suit of clothes on a headless mannequin. That top hat is needed to tell us that there’s an unseen head there. It’s the triumph of artistic shorthand over accuracy.
It probably would’ve been better to have shown him with his head wrapped in bandages with the false nose. But then, Og knows, people would think that Wells had written “The Mummy”.
There are lots of other Wells stories they could have immortalized – The Time Machine, The Food of the Gods, First Men in the Moon, The Land Ironclads, The World Set Free, or any of his many non-fantastic writings. Or his Outline of History. But none of these would have had the instant recognition of The War of the Worlds or The Invisible Man.
And everyone instantly knew what that Martian Machine was supposed to be, despite the artist giving it the wrong number of legs.
The chances of anything four-legged on Mars are a million to one, he said.
At least it’s more catchy than “She had an idea of love as a state of worship and service on the part of the man and of condescension on the part of the woman”.
Or indeed, “It was senseless, it was utterly foolish, but all that was best and richest in Mr. Polly’s nature broke like a wave and foamed up at that girl’s feet, and died, and never touched her.”
Even before I looked it up, I knew there had to be a store called The Best Little Warehouse in Texas.