Stephen Baxter, in a talk for Picocon 13, Imperial College, London, 4 February 1996, remarked:
< Wells's Time Traveller was an expert in "physical optics." Wells notes, in passing, the Traveller's "seventeen papers" on the subject in Philosophical Transactions ( The Time Machine , p60.). >
[HG Wells, The Time Machine , Heinemann 1895. Page numbers in the text refer to Everyman's `Centennial' edition, ed. John Lawton, 1995.]
No wonder the Time Traveller never came back. He wanders the House Absolute to this day, searching for the right mirror.
Damien Broderick