A brief history of the subject, in both science and fiction, with help from the TV and film experts of Comedy Central's Beat the Geeks, Paul Goebel and Marc Heuck.
By Paul Goebel and Marc Heuck Posted 02.19.2002 at 4:52 pm 0 Comments

by Courtesy of Dreamworks Dreamworks' remake of The Time Machine is the latest expression of our fascination with time travel. Courtesy of Dreamworks
PHYSICS FICTION
1733 Memoirs
of the Twentieth Century-An angel brings back a document
from 1998. Samuel Madden's book is part of time-travel fiction trend originating
in utopian literature.
1895 The
Time Machine- H.G. Wells offers the idea that technology
can transport a person through the 4th dimension.
1905 Einstein's
Special Theory of Relativity. Time is not separate from space, but bound
up with it, and flows at different speeds depending on how fast you're moving.
1915 Einstein's
General Theory of Relativity brings gravity into the equations. The next
year, Karl Schwartzchild predicts the possibility of black holes.
1933 Alley
Oop-V.T. Hamlin's caveman hero debuts in the comics; by end
of the decade he's touring history courtesy of Doc Wonmug's time machine.
1935 Einstein
and Nathan Rosen uncover possibility of portals through space-time, opening
a Pandora's box of paradoxes that has yet to be resealed.
1937 The
Star Wagon- Maxwell Anderson's time travel play, shot for
TV three decades later with Dustin Hoffman and Orson Bean.
1949 Mathematician
Kurt Gdel, using Einstein's equations, realizes that a spinning universe
allows for time travel.
1952 A
Sound of Thunder-Seminal Ray Bradbury story in which time
traveler goes dinosaur-hunting courtesy of Time Safari Inc., kills a butterfly,
and accidentally triggers history-changing havoc in the present.
1957 John
Wheeler coins the term wormhole. Thank you card from sci-fi writers never
received.
1959 Twilight
Zone-Rod Serling's moody series taps time travel theme for
many episodes, including "Execution" and " The Last Flight."
1960 George
Pal-directed version of The Time Machine, starring Rod Taylor,
who battles thuggish Morlocks in the far future, falls for docile Eloi tribe
member Weena, and, at film's end, decides to move permanently to the ignorant
Eloi era with a few choice educational texts.
1963 Roy
Kerr postulates that spinning black holes can act as time machines. Evidence
later found that all black holes spin.		 First
episode of Dr. Who, BBC TV series that ran until 1989, detailing
travels of a renegade Time Lord.
1965 Star
Trek pilot-King of all TV sci-fi series laid the groundwork
for decades of time travel, wormhole negotiation, and the like.
1968 Planet
of the Apes-Launch of durable film and TV franchise that
monkeys with evolution, shocks with Statue of Liberty ending. Rod Serling
wrote part of first script.
1969 Slaughterhouse
Five-Kurt Vonnegut's masterly war novel explores Dresden
horror and nature of time itself, via hero Billy Pilgrim.
1972 The
first discovery of a black hole, Cygnus X-1.
1974 Frank
Tipler discovers that an infinitely long spinning cylinder can be used as
a time machine. Searches for one have been unsuccessful.
1978 Christopher
Reeve as Superman, reversing rotation of the Earth to go back in time and
save Lois Lane.
1980 Somewhere
in Time-Christopher Reeve again, this time as a playwright
who wishes himself back in time to romance a famous stage actress from the
early 1900s.
1981 Time
Bandits-A suburban boy goes on a time travel adventure with
dwarves who have "borrowed" a map of the universe's time holes from God.
1984 The
Terminator-Arnold as a killer android, sent back in time
(nude, for some reason) to find clothes and then kill the mother of the
future savior of mankind. In T2, he came back as the good guy.
1985 Cosmic
strings first precisely described by J. Richard Gott III and William Hiscock.
Many cosmologists think these superdense threads formed shortly after the
Big Bang.

Contact-Carl
Sagan's novel

Back
to the Future-A classic. Says Marc Edward Heuck of Beat
the Geeks: "Effective because it describes both the responsibility and
benign wishes of time travel. Going back can create changes, but there
is always the possibility of damage control."
1988 Kip
Thorne publishes recipe for general- purpose time machine. Ingredient list
includes wormholes and negative energy.

1989 Bill
and Ted's Excellent Adventure-Time travel yields excellent
term paper for stoner kids. Time machine looks like a phone booth and it
works, George Carlin tells the boys, by "modern technology."
1991 Cosmic
string time machine proposed by J. Richard Gott III. While beautiful, it
is as practical as all preceding time machines, which is to say, not very.
1995 12
Monkeys-Terry Gilliam film brilliantly explores the paradoxes.
2001 Planet
of the Apes-Remake finishes with mighty puzzling Ape Lincoln
shot.
2002 The
Time Machine-Remake with Guy Pearce slated for March release.
Directed by H.G. Wells' great-grandson, Simon.
Want to learn more about breakthroughs in electronics, medicine, nanotech, and more?
Subscribe to Popular Science today, for less than $1 per issue!

0 Comments


140 years of Popular Science at your fingertips.

Innovation Challenges

Make your ideas part of the revolution
Learn morePowered by Innocentive



Popular Science+ For iPad

Each issue has been completely reimagined for your iPad. See our amazing new vision for magazines that goes far beyond the printed page



Download Our App

Stay up to date on the latest news of the future of science and technology from your iPhone or Android phone with full articles, images and offline viewing



Follow Us On Twitter

Featuring every article from the magazine and website, plus links from around the Web. Also see our PopSci DIY feed


June 2012: Invent Your Own Anything

The 6th annual Invention Awards are here, from an inflatable tourniquet to a better lobster trap to spring-loaded hocket skates. This issue is all about the celebration of invention.

Plus: Making synthetic biology breakthroughs in a garage, building a constantly-moving ping-pong table, and a ridiculously overpowered barbecue.

circ-top-header.gif
circ-cover.gif
bmxmag-ps