The best, without doubt, is the DeLorean in Back to the Future.
The Generalized Nonlinear Extrapolator in Keith Laumer’s The Great Time Machine Hoax (1964).
It was a huge database that was supposed to be able to project a VR simulation of any event in history, but found it easier to move the spectators in time than to actually reproduce the requested scenes!
the Victorian Time Machine from the George Pal film has already ben mentioned, along with the TinkerToy version in the Classics Ilustrated adaptation, and the “Fresnel Lighthouse Lens” version from the movie remake. And the Tardis, and the Time TRavel Packing Box from Primer, and The Guardian of Forever, that looks like a 1950s art installation.And the WABAC machine
More Time Machines
The Giant TV Time Machine in the 1960 Ib Melchior film The Time TRavelers.
The TRavelling Salesman Case time machine from the 1914 film Predestination (which beats the Time TRavelling blanket from Heinlein’s original story “All You Zombies…”)
I kinda like Dr. Doom’s Time TRavel Square on the Ground from The Fantastic Four circa 1960. No frills – you step on the platform, you travel in time. In the Batman comics of the 1950s some professor had a couple of Time Travel chairs that you just sat in. But that would’ve made it difficult to bring things like Blackbeard’s Treasure back through time.
Murray Leinster actually wrote a novel called The Time Tunnel before the TV show came out, which I suspect influenced and inspired that show. Leinster later wrote a couple of novels based on the TV show.
DC comics liked Time Travel “portals”. I know of at least two that showed up on their comics covers in the 1960s. Just a circle floating in space, with another era on the other side.
http://babblingsaboutdccomics.blogspot.com/2017/01/green-lantern-30-chased-by-pterodactyls.html
Similar, I guess, is the Time Mirror in Harlan Ellison’s episode “Demon with a Glass Hand” from The Outer Limits. Or, for that matter, the “Time Bubble” device used in James Cameron’s Terminator movies.
A lot of Time Machines are simply sort-of-boxes that are only really different from the TARDIS in that they aren’t shaped like police boxes (and aren’t bigger on the inside). Like the one in the 1979 movie Time after Time. I think most Time Machines are, when all is said and done, just boxes that travel in time. I know the one in my YA novel The Traveler* is just such a device.
*coming out this September. No joke.
Sometimes literally.
If you judge by looks, the George Pal *Time Machine * is definitely the best.
Another great one is that in “Forms of Things Unknown” from The Outer Limits.
Am I really the first person to mention the Omni, from Voyagers? I loved that show, but I seem to be the only one who remembers it. It was a similar theme to Quantum Leap: Whenever the travelers arrive in time, there’s something wrong with history, and they need to fix it. But it’s voluntary: They bring their time machine with them, and when the indicator light changes from red to green, they can push the button and go to a new time.
I’m also surprised that CalMeacham didn’t mention The Clock that Went Backward, the first time machine in literature.
Extremely Interesting multiple Science Fiction Nexus:
There was a Canadian version of the TV show Howdy Doody in the 1950s with a different cast and production team, which differed materially from the US version. Among other folks, the Canadian show had James Doohan and William Shatner, a decade before Star Trek.
What’s really interesting, in terms of this thread, is that one of the characters on the show was a “Mr. X”, who had a “Whatsis Box” that enabled him to travel anywhere in Time or Space that he wanted. When you consider that the executive producer of the Canadian show was Sydney Newman, who later went to Britain to worjk for the BBC as Head of Drama and created a children’s science fiction show called Doctor Who, things begin to fall together. “Mr. X” and his “WHatsis Box” for travel through Time and Space doesn’t really differ that much from “Dr. Who” with his Time And Relative Displacement In Space TARDIS.
What started out as a simple, straightforward plot device to take the setting of a kids’ show to anywhere or anytime you want became an iconic kid’s BriTV series thart became an Icon. And Captain Kirk and Scotty were there to see it born.
I’ve never seen a picture of the Whatsit Box
Another time machinethat is not much more than a box, but it does have some dryer duct, christmas tree lights, and sound effects. That makes it one of the more sophisticated cardboard box time machines ever built.
One of the more popular Time Machines is Nothing At All. This is different from Time Machines that simply deposit you at your destination (as with the Skynet machine in the Terminator series). The Nothing At All Time Machine doesn’t have any moving parts, or even tangible parts. It’s often, in fact, a State of Mind.
Hark Morgan didn’t need any device to travel back to King Arthur’s Britain in Mark Twain’s a Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.
Martin Padway just got hit by a lightning bolt, or something, in L. Sprague de Camp’s Lest Darkness Fall.
Jack Finney’s "Time Machine’ is just a big ol’ building where you can immerse yourself in the atmosphere of the place and era you want to go to, and just sort of will yourself through time. I don’t know why, but I find this particularly stupid and annoying. He used it in Time and Again (1970) and From Time to Time] (1995)
There’s always the Standing Stones used in Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series. I haven’t watched the series or read the books (although Pepper Mill has), but apparently in the TV show you can just walk through them, whereas in the book you touch it, go unconscious, and wake up in a different time.
In an Asimov novel (I don’t remember which one), some poor shlub is propelled into the distant future just from being hit by a stray burst of radiation.
In Futurama, there’s Professor Farnsworth’s one-way time machine. It can only go forward in time to prevent paradoxes… hopefully.
S06E07 The Late Philip J. Fry - one of the best episodes.
I remember it. The star of the show was Jon-Eric Hexum, who sadly blew his brains out while horsing around with a gun on a movie set a few years later.
The Stars Like Dust, which is one of my personal favorites of his.
I always liked to one in Harry Harrison’s The Technicolor Time Machine. Just a field projected by the machine.
Give me the time machine from the movie Time After Time. H.G. Wells and Jack the Ripper used it, so it’s good enough for me.
Excellent, highly recommended movie.
That’s my vote. Partly because they admit that, every time he traveled back in time, he wiped out the exiting timeline. That was the whole point!
And as such, if you think about it, no one else on his team has ever seen a successful launch of the Chronosphere, because those versions of themselves get wiped out. Every launch is their first time doing it, and yet, they always do it, because that’s their job. It’s quite nihilistic when you think about it.
What was the machine called in the Twilight Zone episode with Abraham Lincoln and John Wilkes Booth?
Do you mean “A Pebble in the Sky” or did he use the same mechanism in “The stars Like Dust.”
I’ve only read the former.
I’ve always wondered where all that clear plastic for the cabin came from. 