DeLorean time machine

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DeLorean time machine
A side view of the DeLorean outside Back to the Future: The Ride
A plot element from the Back to the Future film series
Publisher	Amblin Entertainment
First appearance	Back to the Future (1985)
Created by	Robert Zemeckis
Genre	Science fiction
In story information
Type of plot element	Time machine
Function	Allows the driver and 1 or 2 passengers to travel through time along with the car.
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In the Back to the Future trilogy, the DeLorean time machine was the vehicle used by "Doc" Brown, Marty McFly, and Biff Tannen to travel through time in Hill Valley. It was built by Doc from a DeLorean DMC-12 which used various sources of electricity to power the flux capacitor.

Operation

The time circuits

The operation of the DeLorean time machine was consistent throughout all three films. The operator sat inside the DeLorean and turned on the time circuits, activating a vacuum fluorescent display which showed the destination, present, and last-departed dates and times. After entering a target date, the operator accelerated the car to 88 miles per hour (142 km/h) which activated the flux capacitor (see below). As it accelerates, several rails around the body of the car glow blue and a wormhole generator on top of the car makes a wormhole in front of the car. Surrounded by large sparks, the whole car vanishes in a flash of blue light seconds later, leaving twin trails of fire. Observers outside the vehicle see an implosion of gas as the vehicle disappears, while occupants within the vehicle see a quick flash of light and instantaneously arrive at the target time in the same spatial location as when it departed. Immediately preceding the car's arrival, three large and loud flashes issue forth from the point from which the car emerges from its time travel. After the trip, the DeLorean is extremely cold, and frost forms from atmospheric moisture all over the car's body.

Fuel

In Back to the Future, Doc stated that the time machine was electrical but that he needed a nuclear reaction (produced by plutonium borrowed/stolen from a group of Libyan terrorists) to generate the 1.21 gigawatts of electricity needed. This is the only film where the plutonium is mentioned. At the end of Back to the Future and the same scene re-shot four years later in the beginning of Back to the Future Part II, we learn about the Mr. Fusion model fusion generator, made by Fusion Industries which uses garbage as fuel, it was installed in place of the nuclear reactor from the first film during Doc's first journey thirty years into the future, 2015, when he also had the hover conversion installed. The power source of the flying components was never revealed, but the gas engine appears to be running when the car flies. Also a different flying car can be seen getting some type of fuel pumped into it on the roof of a Texaco in 2015 in the second film. In Back to the Future Part III, the DeLorean's fuel line was damaged during the chase by Indians in 1885, and Doc and Marty's only supply of gasoline was lost. It is stated by Doc that "Mr. Fusion powers the time circuits and flux capacitor, but the internal combustion engine of the DeLorean [ran] on ordinary gasoline; it always has." (It is never mentioned whether Doc had any problem with the leaded gasoline of 1955; non-US-market DeLoreans ran on this fuel quite happily, so there is no reason to think that there need have been a problem). In a desperate attempt to get home, alcohol was used in place of gasoline after the fuel line was patched, destroying the seventy-three-year-old DeLorean's fuel injection manifold. The car never traveled under its own power again (at least across land), but was pulled by a team of horses and later pushed by an 1880s locomotive. However the locomotive was too heavy as a coupled train, therefore Marty and Doc Brown hijacked the train claiming it was for a "science experiment". After the cars were decoupled the old 1880's locomotive was still incapable of reaching 88 miles per hour. Doc Brown however, had one more trick up his sleeve. He inserted his homemade "presto logs" designed to burn hotter, longer and faster than ordinary timber and coal, into the fire box of the locomotive. After an eventful journey with the locomotive's boiler exploding due to pressure, the DeLorean is pushed successfully to 88 miles per hour and the locomotive plunges off a cliff in a brilliant explosion.

Equipment

Flux capacitor

The flux capacitor, which consisted of a regularly squared compartment with three flashing lights arranged as a "Y", was described by Doc as "what makes time travel possible". The device is the core component of Doctor Emmett Brown's fictional time traveling DeLorean DMC-12.

The device was located between the headrests of the seats and, as the time machine neared 88 mph (142 km/h), light coming from the flux capacitor pulsed faster until it became a steady stream of light. Doc originally conceived the idea for the flux capacitor on November 5, 1955 when he slipped and hit his head on the sink while standing on the toilet to hang a clock. A flux capacitor is seen in the front of Doc's second time machine the "Jules Verne" train at the end of Back to the Future III. A smaller flux capacitor also appeared in Back to the Future: The Ride at various Universal Studios theme parks. After the closing of Back to the Future: The Ride Doc can still be seen riding around on a bike, complete with its own flux capacitor. Although it resembles the original DeLorean flux capacitor, nothing is known about this version.

In 2008, Dr. Leon Chua, famous for proposing the memristor in 1971, proposed in a UC Berkeley symposium that a "Memory Capacitor" be built as the next important element in basic circuits.^[1] This capacitor is different from other capacitors by being a function of flux. It is a "flux capacitor". The equation governing the operation of Dr. Chua's flux capacitor is q=C(φ)*v where φ is flux.

How it works

Although the films do not describe exactly how the flux capacitor works, Doc mentions at one point that the stainless steel body of the DeLorean has a direct and influential effect on the "flux dispersal", but he is interrupted before he can finish the explanation. The flux capacitor requires 1.21 gigawatts of electrical power to operate.

Fictional timeline

For most of the first film, the 1.21 gigawatts were supplied by a plutonium-powered nuclear reactor and, with the absence of plutonium, a bolt of lightning channeled directly into the flux capacitor by a long pole and hook in the film's climactic sequence. At the end of the first film and for the remainder of the trilogy, the plutonium nuclear reactor was replaced by a "Mr. Fusion Home Energy Reactor" generator possibly acquired in the year 2015. An obvious parody of Mr. Coffee, the prop was built from a Krups coffee grinder. The same coffee grinder can also be seen in the galley of the Nostromo in the 1979 film Alien. The "Mr. Fusion" device apparently converts household waste into electrical power. Due to a "hover conversion" made in 2015, the car also became capable of hovering and flight, though it lost this ability at the end of the second film.

The DeLorean returned to 1985 and proceeded to travel to 2015, where it was stolen, taken back to 1955, and returned again to 2015 without Doc's knowledge. When they returned in 1985, they found it was a different present, so they traveled back to 1955 to fix the timeline. The DeLorean was again struck by lightning in the year 1955 (in the very same electrical storm), this time by accident, causing it to malfunction, activating the flux capacitor, leaving a twisted fire trail behind. The lightning created an overload and the DeLorean vanished from 1955, traveling back in time to 1885 (earlier in the film, Doc had mentioned that the time circuits were not functioning correctly - several instances in the film that show the time circuit display show 1885 as the destination when the time circuits malfunction).

Once in 1885, the DeLorean was then hidden in the Delgado mine for 70 years, "... because suitable replacement parts will not be invented until 1947," presumably a reference to the invention of the transistor. The DeLorean was recovered from the mine in 1955 and repaired by Doc Brown's 1955 counterpart, thus restoring it to working order; Doc's modifications seem to use vacuum tubes and not transistors. While Doc stated he was happy in his new life in 1885 and informed Marty that he was not to attempt to retrieve him, Marty and the Doc of 1955 learn of tragedy to come Doc's way in 1885; therefore, the 1955 Doc agrees to send Marty back to the Old West. Due to a broken fuel line caused by a Native American attack during Marty's re-entry and an attempt to substitute alcohol for fuel - which destroyed the fuel injectors, the DeLorean's final trip from 1885 to 1985 was partially powered by a steam locomotive pushing the vehicle up to 88 mph while using Mr. Fusion to generate the 1.21 gigawatt required to activate the flux capacitor and break the time barrier.

Once the DeLorean returned to the proper 1985 timeline, Marty was able to bail out before it was destroyed by a train running the opposite direction.

Gigawatt

The power required is pronounced in the film as "one point twenty-one jiggawatts". While the closed-captioning in home video versions spells the word as it appears in the script, jigowatt,^[2] the actual spelling matches the standard prefix and the term for power of "one billion watts": gigawatt. Though obscure, the "j" sound at the beginning of the SI prefix giga- is in fact the original and still an acceptable pronunciation for "gigawatt".^[3][4] In the DVD commentary for Back to the Future, Robert Zemeckis stated that he had thought it was pronounced this way because this was how the scientific adviser that he had for the film pronounced it.

Mr. Fusion

The Mr. Fusion Home Energy Reactor is the name of a power source used by the DeLorean time machine in the Back to the Future trilogy. It can be seen towards the end of Back to the Future when "Doc" Emmett Brown pulls into the McFlys' driveway after a trip to the year 2015, and is an obvious parody of Mr. Coffee machines, which were very popular at the time of filming. The appliance from which the prop was made was actually a Krups "Coffina" model coffee grinder, which is highly sought after by collectors.

The Mr. Fusion Home Energy Reactor converts household waste to power for the time machine's flux capacitor and time circuits using nuclear fusion (specifically cold fusion.) In the film, Mr. Fusion allows the DeLorean time machine to generate the required 1.21 gigawatts needed to travel to any point in time. The energy produced by Mr. Fusion replaces plutonium as the primary power source of the DeLorean's time travel and flight capabilities, allowing the characters to bypass the arduous power-generation requirements that the plot of the first film hinged upon. It is never mentioned what Doc Brown did with the remaining plutonium, or if he used it all during unseen trips after he leaves Marty near the end of Back to the Future part one.

When the DeLorean is parked in a 2015 alleyway, a "Fusion Industries" machine is briefly seen.

Electronics

In basic electronics, a capacitor stores its energy as an electrostatic field, while an inductor stores energy via magnetic flux. As such, the term "flux capacitor" pairs two corresponding but seemingly contradictory concepts in much the same manner as the fictional place name "Hill Valley" pairs constructs built from antonyms.

Nonetheless, the phrase "flux capacitor" has appeared in more serious contexts. U.S. Patent 6,084,285 describes a "lateral flux capacitor having fractal-shaped perimeters". This device is a capacitor, some of whose capacitance exists between two conductors on a single layer (hence, "lateral"), within an integrated circuit. A hyphen in the name, as in "lateral-flux capacitor," would have made the meaning clearer; as it is a capacitor with lateral flux, not a "flux capacitor" that is lateral.

Flux is commonly used in electronics and electromagnetic theory and application, but rarely in the context of a capacitor. In general terms, flux simply means the rate at which some quantity (such as electric charge) passes through a surface (e.g. charge flux). It is speculated that the film terminology is used fictitiously to represent a new and unknown type of flux.

While it is not generally called a "flux capacitor", the common inductor is a device whose function in many contexts, such as the switching power supply, is exactly that which a flux capacitor would have - it stores electrical energy as a magnetic flux for later retrieval. This way a pulsing current can be converted to a constant voltage higher or lower than the input voltage. Since the 1890s version of the flux capacitor (mounted on the train) is exactly that (a large coil of wire), it appears that this was not lost on the movie makers.

An electrolytic capacitor that uses a flux for its electrolyte could be said to be a flux capacitor, however it would lack the glowing tubes that were shown in the film.

In an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, it is mentioned that the Enterprise has a flux capacitor.

Translations

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• The European Spanish dub of the film translated flux as the nonexistent fluzo instead of flujo (meaning both flux and flow), adding to the exoticness of a condensador de fluzo. However, the Latin American version translates the phrase as "condensador de flujo".
• The Italian dub of the film translated the name as "flusso canalizzatore", which roughly means "channeling flux"; however, when Marty reads the letter from Doc in the third film, it talks about the broken "condensatore di flusso", which is an exact translation of "flux capacitor". The literal translation "condensatore di flusso" was also used for the Italian dub of the animated series.
• In the German-dubbed version, the device was called the "Fluxkompensator" ("Flux compensator"). A more literal German translation of "flux capacitor", however, would be Flusskondensator.
• In the French version, the DeLorean needs 2.21 gigawatts instead of 1.21 (for the lips sync needs). The flux capacitor was translated as "convecteur temporel" ("time convector"). The literal French translation for flux capacitor would be "condensateur de flux".
• For the Brazilian version of the film, the flux capacitor was translated as "capacitor de fluxo", a direct translation.
• In the Turkish version, the device was called "akım kapasitörü", although a literal translation would be "akım kondansatörü".
• In the Finnish subtitled version, the flux capacitor was directly translated as "vuokondensaattori".
• In the most commonly shown Swedish subtitles, it is translated as "fluxkondensator" (flux capacitor), but the word "flödeskondensator" (flow capacitor) has also been used in another translation.
• In the Russian version, flux capacitor was translated to "потоковый накопитель" ("flux capacitor"), "накопитель потока" ("accumulator of flux") or "конденсатор потока" ("capacitor of flux").
• In the Hungarian-dubbed version, flux capacitor was translated to "fluxuskondenzátor", which is an exact translation of "flux capacitor".
• In polish dub, it was called "Kondensator Przepływu" (literal translation) and "Kompresor Czasu" (lit."Time Compressor") (another dubbing version).

Other elements

The DeLorean time machine was a licensed, registered vehicle in the state of California, where the films take place. The vanity license plate used in the film said "OUTATIME" (which is too long for the standard 7 characters on California license plates), and when Doc returned from the future, it was a barcode license plate, which implied that by that year license plates have moved to other more sophisticated means of tracking and registering.

Although the DeLorean was destroyed at the end of the trilogy, Doc used the remains of the destroyed steam locomotive, repaired it and created a new flux capacitor to create the Time Train enabling him to return to 1985 with Clara and their two sons, Jules and Verne. Unlike its predecessor, the locomotive's flux capacitor was steam-powered and located on the front of the vehicle rather than within the passenger area. The locomotive also has the ability to fly and hover, much like the DeLorean at the end of Part I and throughout Part II, and the future (2015) era cars in Part II. There is some suggestion that this is possible because he had already taken it forward in time before it is seen and obtained a "hoverconversion" much like the one done to the DeLorean, which is also suggested by the almost identical nature of the transformation.

In The Animated Series, Doc rebuilt the DeLorean, restoring most of its features, including Mr. Fusion and the hover conversion. He also seemingly added the capability to travel through space in addition to time (i. e., appear at a different location than the one it departed), similar to the TARDIS from Doctor Who.

Interesting notes: In Part II, for a brief point on November 12, 1955, there were three copies of the DeLorean at the same time, although never seen together. The first one was the one that the original Marty (his past "other self") drove when he arrived on November 5. The second one was the one that Doc and Marty had when they returned to 1955. Finally, the third one was the one that Old Biff had stolen and brought back to 1955. Interestingly enough, Biff never really was shown how to work the time machine. There was another, fourth, DeLorean stored in the old mine (although not revealed until Part III), which was not there earlier in the day until after Doc Brown and the DeLorean were struck by lightning and sent back to 1885. The DeLorean in the mine would have then appeared through the ripple-effect. Also, the parts they needed for the repairs to the damaged DeLorean could theoretically have been taken from the other DeLorean sealed in the mine for Marty to discover in the later years. However this would have created a paradox which would have prevented the Marty from 'Part II' from travelling back to 1885 in the first place, as the DeLorean he would have discovered in the mine with the 1955 Doc would have been stripped by their past (and future)selves. Also, it is highly unlikely that the version of the car that is buried in the mine has any usable fluids (such as gasoline), since it is standard practice to drain out all fluids from a car before storing it for an extended period of time. (1955 Doc mentions that he "put gas in the tank", implying that there was none there when the car was buried.)

Behind the scenes

Development

The time machine went through several variations during production of the first film, Back to the Future. In the first draft of the screenplay, the time machine was a laser device that was housed in a room (like the time machine featured in Deja Vu). At the end of the first draft the device was attached to a refrigerator and taken to an atomic bomb test site. Director Robert Zemeckis said in an interview that the idea was scrapped because he did not want children to start climbing into refrigerators and getting trapped inside. In the third draft of the film the time machine was a car, as Zemeckis reasoned that if you were going to make a time machine, you would want it to be mobile.^[5] The specific choice of vehicle was a DeLorean DMC-12 for the purposes of it looking like an alien spaceship^[6] due to its characteristic gullwing doors. However, in order to send Marty back to the future, the vehicle had to drive into a nuclear test site. Ultimately this concept was considered too expensive to film, so the power source was changed to lightning.

When the filmmakers arrived at the point where the time machine would be built into a car, the art department was instructed to come up with designs for the DeLorean. Andrew Probert was the first artist to explore the subject, before Ron Cobb joined the production, but his designs were deemed "too perfect" for the look the producers wanted, which was to make it look as if it had been built in a garage by Doctor Brown. The idea was that it had been constructed with parts found in a hardware and electronics store, so it couldn’t look too sophisticated. It also had to look dangerous, as Producer Bob Gale noted in the DVD commentary for Back to the Future.^[6] The task was undertaken by Ron Cobb who added the coils to the back of the vehicle. The nuclear reactor was also a design choice made by Cobb. This choice proved to be important, given the direction the script had taken. Cobb complemented the nuclear reactor with one vent on the back of the car, since it was generally known at the time that nuclear reactors had vents. Once Cobb had left the production, the producers wanted to balance the design with another vent, keeping a symmetrical aesthetic. Probert was asked to step in and he brought the design to its final form. At the end of the first film of the trilogy these vents become the propulsion system for the improved DeLorean, which now had hovering abilities and could reach the time-traveling speed of 88 miles per hour flying. The production design team added other buttons and lights inside the car to make it look more appealing and complex in order for the audience to have something attractive to look at.

Different parts from three 1981 DeLoreans were used in the first film.^{[citation needed]} Liquid nitrogen was poured onto the car for scenes after it had traveled through time to give the impression that it was cold. The base for the nuclear-reactor was made from the hubcap from a Dodge Polara. Aircraft parts and blinking lights were added for effect. Ultimately, 5 real DeLoreans were used in the filming of the trilogy; plus one 'process' car built for interior shots.^[7] A 7th DeLorean was also used in the filming, however, this one was merely a full-sized, fiberglass model used for exterior shots where the vehicle hovers above the set and actors interact with the vehicle.^[8]

In popular culture

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A front view of the DeLorean as seen on the Universal Studios backlot tour.

Because of the popularity of the Back to the Future films, there have been many references made to the DeLorean and/or Flux Capacitor as a means of time travel. These references are as diverse as the cartoons Family Guy, Drawn Together, sci-fi series Stargate, different incarnations of Star Trek, various comics, video games, wrestling, TV series Chuck (season 2, episode 10), and even songs. The "Flux Capacitor" is a central element to the Busted song "Year 3000" and "Retour Vers Le Futur" performed by the Mantras crew and Anubis5, It has also been mentioned in series 2 and 3 of Doctor Who so the Doctor can explain time travel easily, and Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman in an episode featuring "H.G. Wells", played by Lane Davies (during his first appearance ("Tempus Fugitive", 1995), Wells indicates the "flux facilitator" is the device that makes his machine work; in his second appearance ("Soul Mates", 1996), Wells describes the same device as a "flux capacitor").

References

External links

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