Technology H.G. Wells first conceptualised through words

Everything starts as an idea before it becomes real and many modern-day inventions have been inspired by science fiction. H.G. Wells in particular is held in awe today for being able to predict devices for whom the base technology hadn't even existed. He was born in 1866 and he, along with Jules Verne, is known as the Father of Science Fiction. His writings had a profound effect on the world, for a lot of the technology he described, came to exist in some form or another over the past century and some of his ideas are still being worked upon by scientists.

A lot of his ideas are taken from 'Men Like Gods', where he writes about where humanity would be in the future. He wrote, “For in Utopia, except by previous arrangement, people do not talk together on the telephone,” he writes. “A message is sent to the station of the district in which the recipient is known to be, and there it waits until he chooses to tap his accumulated messages. And any that one wishes to repeat can be repeated. Then he talks back to the senders and dispatches any other messages he wishes. The transmission is wireless.”

This sounds a lot like text messaging and emailing!

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Wells had written a book called 'Floor Games' in 1911 which is an introduction to gaming where he had written about several indoor games for children. In 1913 he followed it with 'Little Wars' which he described as, "A Game for Boys from twelve years of age to one hundred and fifty and for that more intelligent sort of girl who likes boys' games and books.”

It's written as if for children and amongst the rules there is a lot on the philosophy behind war, which he was clearly against. He explained, "You have only to play at Little Wars three or four times to realize just what a blundering thing Great War must be. Great War is at present, I am convinced, not only the most expensive game in the universe, but it is a game out of all proportion. Not only are the masses of men and material and suffering and inconvenience too monstrously big for reason, but—the available heads we have for it, are too small. That, I think, is the most pacific realization conceivable, and Little War brings you to it as nothing else but Great War can do,” as reported by the New York Times.

He was absolutely correct in predicting a child's fascination with strategy-based war games.

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Well's 'War of the Worlds' has had so many modern adaptations and remakes, everyone is familiar with the story and the heat ray the aliens used to incinerate anything in its path. However historical context is what makes the book so amazing. It was published it 1998 and the first laser was built in 1960.

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In 'The World Set Free' Wells described a bomb that keeps exploding, detailing how it works on the release of atomic energy on an industrial scale. The book released in 1913, a year before the first World War and was read by Leo Szilard. He eventually worked in physics and was amongst the many working on splitting an atom to harness it's energy. British scientists had succeeded in splitting the atom for the first time by artificial means in 1932 but in 1933 Szilard got an idea of how to sustain a nuclear chain reaction.

"Knowing what it would mean - and I knew because I had read HG Wells - I did not want this patent to become public," he wrote in his memoir.

History now remembers him as the man who invented the nuclear bombs that were used against Japan in the second world war.

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'The Island of Dr. Moreau' was one of Well's earlier publications. In the book, a shipwrecked man finds his way to an island filled with strange creatures created by a scientist. While the scientist uses vivisection, the hybrid creatures he created are used, and the ways he tried to mix humans and animals are experimentative branches of science. Scientists are working on creating better species using different methods of combining animal and human matters for many reasons since.

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Tanks first were used in the second World War but 13 years earlier Wells had released a short story titled 'The Land Ironclads' which described a war with machines. He wrote in the book,

"In that flickering pallor it had the effect of a large and clumsy black insect, an insect the size of an ironclad cruiser, crawling obliquely to the first line of trenches and firing shots out of portholes in its side."

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In 'The Sleeper Awakes' the book described two men walking up to a wall and then, "A long strip of this apparently solid wall rolled up with a snap, hung over the two retreating men and fell again." This book was published in 1899 and in 1960 the first automatic door was installed.

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