In the novel, it is a fast-moving three-legged walker reported to be 100 feet (30 meters) tall with multiple, whip-like tentacles used for grasping, and two lethal weapons: the Heat-Ray and a gun-like tube used for discharging canisters of a poisonous chemical black smoke that kills everything.

[1] The fighting machines walk on three tall, articulated legs and have a grouping of long, whip-like metallic tentacles hanging beneath the central body, a single flexible appendage holding the heat-ray projector.

[3] The fighting machines can also discharge steam through nozzles that dissipates the black smoke, which then settles as an inert, powdery substance.

HMS Thunder Child, a Royal Navy torpedo ram, engages a trio of tripods that are pursuing a refugee flotilla heading to France from the southeast English coast; the Thunder Child is eventually destroyed by the Martian heat-ray, but not before taking out two fighting machines.

[3] The original conceptual drawings for the fighting machines, drawn by Warwick Goble, accompanied the initial appearance of The War of the Worlds in Pearson's Magazine in 1897.

Wells' The War of the Worlds the tripods have a large, free-moving head atop the smaller main body, giving its sole Martian occupant a panoramic view.

It has three thick, metallic tentacles, which are held on high, made up of boxy-looking segments, making them appear like large bicycle chains rather than slim and whip-like, as described in Wells' novel; they are used mainly to capture humans during the film.

[9] The fighting machines are described in Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds and depicted on the album artwork painted by Michael Trim.

The spheres would begin to spin in a fast speed and hover above the ground shooting heat rays at any human victim setting them ablaze.

In Sherlock Holmes's War of the Worlds, it is hinted that the Martians may have accelerated their evolution using selective breeding and eugenics, and that their original body type may have resembled the form of the tripods.

The coins bear an image of a Martian Fighting Machine with four instead of three legs, and The Invisible Man wearing the wrong style hat, resulting in derision from fans and collectors of Wells' work.