“Wait a minute, Doc. Are you telling me that you built a time machine… out of a DeLorean?!” – Marty McFly
On November 5th, 1955 in the 80’s classic film Back to the Future, the Flux Capacitor was invented.
The story goes, Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) was hanging a clock in his bathroom on November 5th, 1955. He slipped and hit his head on the sink. When he came to, he had a vision. A vision of the Flux Capacitor, which is what makes time travel possible in the film (along with some plutonium, or 1.21 gigawatts of electricity, which we find out in the film is equal to the charge of a bolt of lightning).
With the combination of up and coming comic actor Michael J. Fox, the warm, sometimes spastic, but humorous antics of Einstein-haired Christopher Lloyd, and a DeLorean tricked out with the gadgets for traveling through time, Spielberg and team took us Back to the Future nearly 35 years ago.
You probably know the story of this now classic, and best, time travel flick. Teenager Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) accidentally travels back in time 30 years by way of his friend Doc Brown’s time-travel-modified DeLorean, and runs into his high-school-aged parents. By interacting with them, Marty inadvertently alters the future timeline and must figure out a way to fix it and get “back to the future” before reality, as he knows it, both in 1955 and 1985, is drastically changed, or possibly erased, forever.
But that trip through time never would have been possible without Doc Brown’s invention of time travel’s most important gizmo, the Flux Capacitor.
Over the summer, one of my best friends and I decided to take a day and visit Hill Valley. So we hopped in my low rider named George and cruised by to see if it really is “A Nice Place To Live”.
