Passage 1: from The Time Machine by H. G. Wells (1898)
It was at ten o'clock to-day that the first of all Time Machines began its career. I gave it a last tap, tried all
the screws again, put one more drop of oil on the quartz rod, and sat myself in the saddle. . . . I took the
starting lever in one hand and the stopping one in the other, pressed the first, and almost immediately the
second. I seemed to reel; I felt a nightmare sensation of falling; and, looking round, I saw the laboratory
exactly as before. Had anything happened? For a moment I suspected that my intellect had tricked me.
Then I noted the clock. A moment before, as it seemed, it had stood at a minute or so past ten; now it was
nearly half-past three!
The purpose of a time machine is _____.
to tell time
to travel through time
to increase the number of hours in a day
to give the writer something to do
