Time Machine - Operators Guide - DeLorean

Back to the Future DeLorean Time Machine … Operators Guide.

The #DeLorean #timemachine is a fictional automobile-based time travel vehicle device as featured in the Back to the Future franchise.

Operation of the #DeLorean #Timemachine

The main operation of the time machine is the same in all three films. The operator is seated inside the DeLorean (except the first time, when a remote control is used), and turns on the time circuits using the Time Drive Switch, this activates a unit containing multiple fourteen- and seven-segment displays that shows the :

Destination Time and Date (Red),
Present Time and Date (Green)
Last-departed Time and Date (Yellow)

Enter in your own Time and Date into the TIme circuits using the keypad below the unit so, if you wanted to travel to 5th November 1955 at 6.00am you would enter :

11 05 1955 0600 then press enter.

The Plutonium Gauges will power up at the same time as the Time Display. After entering a target date, and with the Time Drive Switch is left on, the system is active. Once the operator accelerates the car up to #88 miles per hour (141.6 km/h), the flux capacitor actives……(and the rest is History !)

As it accelerates, several coils around the body glow blue/white while a burst of light appears in front of it as it enters the wormhole (see our ‘Is Time Travel possible’ blog)

Surrounded by electrical current (similar to a Tesla coil), the whole car vanishes in a flash of white/blue light seconds later, leaving a pair of fiery tire tracks.

A digital speedometer attached to the dashboard allows the operator an accurately gauge of the car's speed.

Observers outside the vehicle see an implosion of plasma 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 (relative to the Earth) as when it departed.

Hover Conversion - The DeLorean Time Machine

In the destination time, (immediately before the car's arrival), three large and loud flashes occur at the point from which the car emerges from its time travel (at the speed of Sound, the Sonic Boom). After the trip, the exterior of the DeLorean is extremely cold, and frost forms from atmospheric moisture all over the car's body and thermal heaters on the back of the vehicle.

A few technical glitches with the DeLorean that could hinder time travel for its users :

In the first film, the car has starter problems and Marty McFly has a hard time restarting once stopped, much to his repeated frustration.

In the second movie, the destination time display malfunctions and shows random dates (mostly January 1, 1885), which partially cause Doc to be sent to 1885.

In the third movie, the flying circuits (added by Doc in 2015), fuel line, and fuel injection manifold are damaged, preventing the car from moving under its own power

In the feature film series, Dr. Emmett L. Brown builds a time machine from a retrofitted #DMC DeLorean car, to gain insights into history and the future. Instead, he and Marty McFly end up using it to travel across 130 years of Hill Valley history to change the past for the better and to undo the negative effects of time travel.

The car requires 1.21 gigawatts of power, and needs to reach 88 miles per hour in order to operate the Time Machine circuits so it can time travel. The official Back to the Future DeLorean (named the A Car) can now be viewed at the Petersen Automotive Museum

Hill Valley Clock Tower - Back to the Future

#DeLorean Power ..... !

The time machine circuits are electric and require a colossal power input of 1.21 gigawatts (1,620,000 hp) to operate.

Originally provided by a plutonium-fuelled nuclear reactor (in the first movie), #DocBrown has no access to plutonium in 1955, so he outfits the car with a large pole and hook in order to channel the power of a lightning bolt into the #FluxCapacitor and send #Marty back to 1985.

During Doc's first visit to 2015, he had the machine refitted to Hover above ground in addition to standard road driving, and he replaces the nuclear reactor with a Mr. Fusion generator that uses garbage as fuel.

DeLorean Time Machine - Being pushed by steam locomotive

Although the #MrFusion unit provides the required power for the time machine, the DeLorean is still powered by an internal 2.8 V6 PRV combustion engine for propulsion.

This caused a problem when the fuel line was damaged during Marty's trip to 1885 in Back to the Future Part III; after he and Doc patch it, they attempt to use whiskey as a replacement fuel since commercial gasoline is not yet available.

The test fails, damaging the car's fuel injection manifold and leaving it unable to travel under its own power.

Doc and Marty consider options to reach the required 88 mph such as :
Pulling it with horses, which fails because the car barely breaks 20 mph) but ultimately settle on pushing the car with a steam locomotive.

For the extra power needed to push the DeLorean up to speed, Doc adds his own version of "Presto Logs" (a chemically treated mixture of pressed wood and anthracite) to the locomotive's boiler and chooses a location with a straight section of track long enough to achieve 88 mph

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, jiggawatt, the actual spelling matches the standard prefix and the term for power of "One Billion Watts": Gigawatt. Although rarely used, the "j" sound at the beginning of the SI prefix "giga-" is an acceptable pronunciation for "gigawatt."

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