The Dark Horse Embankment Machine
The Digging Machine (also known as the Embankment machine or digging mechanism) was an autonomous machine used by the Martians in The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells.
Description[]
The machine is featured only once in the novel in very little detail. Rather than describe its appearance, Wells describes it as an excavator used to widen the pits where the Cylinders have landed. While working it whistles and emits jets of green vapour, shaking the ground with rythmic shocks.
Wells explains that the machine itself has no pilot or a form of cockpit, and that it appears to be a form of automaton.
When the Martians are on the move, either the Embankment-machine is abandoned or taken with them to work
In other adaptations[]
Martian Machines (Digging Machine is Far Left)
The Embankment-machine has been featured in the graphic novel by Dark Horse Comics. The machine here is portrayed as a mechanical Earthworm/Centipede that feeds the soil into a mouth-like intake rather than actually dig, and moves about on several mechanical feet. Several of these are seen at the main Martian camp in London, left abandoned as the Martians succumb to the Earths' bacteria.
Another version appears in The War of the Worlds 1998 PC Game based on Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds. This Digging Mechanism was a bulky, four-legged machine whose purpose was to build defensive fortifications and related structures. Unlike the novel's version though, this machine does not seem to be automated.