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In the Back to the Future franchise, the DeLorean time machine is a time travel vehicle constructed from a retrofitted DMC DeLorean. Its time travel ability is derived from the "flux capacitor", a component that allows the car to travel to the past or future (though not through space). This occurs when the car accelerates to 88 miles per hour and requires 1.21 gigawatts of electricity. In 2021, the time machine was added to the Library of Congress's National Historic Vehicle Register. Operation The control of the time machine is the same in all three films. The operator is seated inside the DeLorean (except the first time, when the remote control is used), and turns on the time circuits by turning a handle near the gear lever, activating a unit containing multiple fourteen- and seven-segment displays that show the destination (red), present (green), and last departed (yellow) dates and times. After entering a target date with the keypad inside the DeLorean, the operator accelerates the car to 88 mph (142 km/h), which activates the flux capacitor. As it accelerates, several coils around the body glow blue/white while a burst of light appears in front of it. Surrounded by an electric 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 is attached to the dashboard so that the operator can accurately gauge the car's speed. Various proposals have been brought forth in the past by fans of the movie franchise for why the car has to be moving at 88 mph to achieve temporal displacement, but actually the production crew chose the velocity simply because they liked how it looked on the speedometer, modified for the movie. The actual speedometer on the production DeLorean's dashboard only goes up to 85 mph, and the car itself was criticized for being underpowered. Observers outside the vehicle see an implosion of plasma as the vehicle disappears, leaving behind a trail of fire aligned with the DeLorean's tires (which can also appear in midair), 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. 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. After the trip, the exterior of the DeLorean is extremely cold, and frost forms from atmospheric moisture all over the car's body. Vents on the back heat the vehicle after time travel. The DeLorean suffers assorted malfunctions and damage over the course of the trilogy. In the first film, the car has starter problems and has a hard time restarting once stopped, much to Marty's repeated frustration. In the second film, the destination time display malfunctions and begins to show a series of random dates, causing Doc to be sent back to 1885 when the DeLorean is struck by lightning with him inside. In the third film, a note left by Doc's 1885 self reveals that the DeLorean's flying circuits (added by him in 2015) were destroyed by the strike. After Marty travels back to 1885, the fuel line and fuel injection manifold both suffer damage, leaving the car unable to move under its own power. The time machine is electric and requires a power input of 1.21 gigawatts (1,620,000 hp) to operate, originally provided by a plutonium-fueled nuclear reactor. In the first film, following Marty's accidental trip from 1985 to 1955, Doc 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 flux capacitor and send Marty back to 1985. During Doc's first visit to 2015, he has the machine refitted to fly in addition to standard road driving, and he replaces the nuclear reactor with a Mr. Fusion generator that uses garbage as fuel. Although the Mr. Fusion unit provides the required power for the time machine, the DeLorean is still powered by an internal combustion engine for propulsion. The fuel line is 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 30 mph) and ultimately settle on pushing the car with a steam locomotive. They replace the DeLorean's standard wheels with a set designed to mate with train rails. For the extra power needed to push it 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. "Jigowatts" The power required is pronounced in the film as "one point twenty-one jigowatts", with a "jigowatt" referring to "one billion watts". The spelling of "jigowatts" is used in the script and was also the spelling used in the closed-captioning in earlier home video versions of the film. However, the correct spelling is "gigawatts". Although rarely used, the "j" sound at the beginning of the SI prefix "giga-" is an acceptable pronunciation. Later versions of closed captioning, such as in the 2020 DVD Trilogy release have corrected the spelling to "gigawatts". In the DVD commentary for Back to the Future, Bob Gale states that he had thought it was pronounced this way because it was how a scientific adviser for the film pronounced it. The "jigowatts" spelling is used by Alan Dean Foster in the novelizations of the second and third films. Equipment Flux capacitor The flux capacitor, which consists of a rectangular-shaped compartment with three flashing Geissler-style tubes arranged in a "Y" configuration, is described by Doc as "what makes time travel possible". The device is the core component of the time machine. As the time machine nears 88 mph, light coming from the flux capacitor begins pulsing more rapidly until it becomes a steady stream. Doctor Emmet Brown originally conceived the idea for the flux capacitor on November 5, 1955, when he slipped on the edge of his toilet while hanging a clock in his bathroom and hit his head on the sink. In 1955 "Doc" had named the flux capacitor the "Flux Compresser" as shown on 1955 "Doc's" diagram. A similar flux capacitor is also seen in the chimney headlamp of Doc's second time machine, the Time Machine Locomotive, at the end of Back to the Future Part III. 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..... Discover the Sorcha Mowbray popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Sorcha Mowbray books.