10 Everyday Items That May Be Used to Time Travel

By Dan Billings, Jan 17, 2012 in Pop Culture

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H.G Wells wrote The Time Machine in 1895 as an analogy of his fears of the industrial revolution, but his story of a time traveler who visited a troubled future inspired millions to dream about traveling to times before and after now. Many arguments end with someone saying, “How would you know? You weren’t there.” To end an argument about who owns a Bear Suit, Mark and Tom, of the popular Internet comedy TV series The Future Machine, set out to build a time machine from a microwave oven. However, like so many before them, Mark and Tom realize that time travel with a household appliance comes with dire consequences. Nonetheless, individuals will continue to use many other everyday items that may have the potential to spiral an individual through time and space, whether that trip is figurative or real.

The Future Machine: Episode 1

1. A car

Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) achieved his dream of building a time machine with a DeLorean souped up with plutonium and a flux capacitor. In Back to the Future, when showing Marty McFly his invention, Doc Brown had to send Marty into the future where Libyan terrorists try to steal his invention. When he arrives back in 1955, Marty meets his father as a teenager before he became the hapless man that he believed his father to be. When in the past, Marty also watches as his mother and father seemed to drift apart, wiping his own existence from the future. In the end, he has to work with the past version of Doc Brown to get back to the future by using the same car.

2. A pen and paper

Like H.G. Wells, anyone can travel to times that have come and gone and times that can only be imagined. The traveling only has to be documented from one’s own mind. Apparently it’s that easy. So grab a piece of paper and write down your dreams of the future, and ask a relative what they went through as they grew up. If H.G. was right, a pen and paper may be one of the safest ways to recreate the past or create a future without the dilemmas of time travel.

3. A toaster

In the episode The Treehouse of Horror V, Homer Simpson found a way to travel through time after fixing a broken toaster. However, he failed to listen to the advice of his father, Abraham Simpson, “If you ever travel back in time, don’t step on anything. Because even the slightest change can alter the future in ways you can’t imagine.” In the end, after stepping on prehistoric newts, swatting large mosquitos, and sneezing on many dinosaurs, he lands in a present where Marge, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie eat with lizard tongues, and decides that this world is good enough.

4. A freezer

When baseball great Ted Williams died, his family argued whether or not to freeze the remains of their father in order to preserve them for a future that would herald a new, cloned Ted Williams. Although in the end, the children who did not want this future for their father won the argument; cryogenics is still a thriving imagination device to allow those living today to visit a future without disease. An interesting theory, but it’s not as prestigious as traveling to the future ourselves.

5. TVs and DVRs

Currently on PBS, we can all travel back to a World War I manor in England. Downton Abbey tells the story of an aristocratic family nearing the end of its power as times, and the servants who currently work for them, appear to be changing. Although very few of us alive today experienced this time in history, Masterpiece Theater allows us to visit many times and places. Additionally, technological advances, such as the DVR, allow us to pause live television and watch programs that have previously aired. And, moreover, on-demand access to streaming video, watched on today’s newest television screens, will ultimately obsolete the DVR, at least for recording purposes. ‘Time’ simply does not have the ‘power’ it once had in television viewing.

6. A train

Many physicists believe that time travel is truly possible, and the theory of relativity, developed by Albert Einstein, may be central to its development. Einstein used a train to explain his theory. Imagine you are riding on a train traveling at 100 mph. To the individual standing at a train station when the train passes, you are moving at 100 mph. However, if the train is next to another train also going 100 mph, you may see someone looking right at you. It looks like that person isn’t moving because relative to you, you’re both traveling at the same time and at the same speed. This relativity gets stronger as speeds approach the speed of light. Theorists argue that if a vehicle travels past the speed of light, there could be moments where time travels backwards.

7. A wardrobe

Ever go to an event with your parents and wonder how old that shirt or dress may be that they’re wearing? Maybe your father has a leisure suit that sparkles with your mom’s blue eyes. Or your mother owns a nice flared sleeve blouse that glows like a dying fire. Walk into their closet and travel to a time where they cared what they looked like.

8. A police box

A blue police box can be found on many street corners in the UK. And one of them can travel through time and space with the last Time Lord. Doctor Who has been a staple of British radio and television for decades and has recently made a splash on American television. The Doctor (currently played by Matt Smith) travels with his companions, Amy Pond (Karen Gillan) and her husband Rory Williams (Arthur Darvill), to many different places and times. They have visited Vincent Van Gogh and Winston Churchill as well as futures where the Doctor has died and where the outlook is bleak. In the end, with humor and adventure, Doctor Who provides the best visions of what time travel could be.

9. Photo albums

During the holidays, it seems pictures from the past are everywhere. Many of us keep pictures of ourselves with relatives that may not be around anymore, and just one peek at the time a grandfather was playing baseball with you, or of an aunt who would give you a McDonald’s gift certificate every time you saw her, instantly transports you back to that time and place.

10. A sofa

Time can be accelerated simply by laying on a sofa all weekend long while playing video games like Call of Duty or Skyrim, or by watching playoff football or college basketball, or by writing magazine stories. Test it out. Monday arrives much faster!

The Future Machine: Episode 2

The Future Machine: Episode 3

Watch Additional Episodes of The Future Machine

Dan Billings lives in Mt. Prospect, Illinois. When he’s not running and listening to BBC podcasts, he’s reading comic books. He likes to consider himself a successful funny man, but that may only be true compared to the other legal writers that he spends his days with. On occasion, he writes on his own personal blog at rockthewesternworld.com.