
James Gleick
A comprehensive and engaging exploration of time travel’s history, science, philosophy, paradoxes, and cultural impact.
James Gleick’s book connects the invention of the term 'time travel' to 1914, a back-formation from Wells’s 'Time Traveller'.
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Section 1
8 Sections
Imagine standing at the twilight of the nineteenth century, where the flickering light of an oil lamp illuminates a strange machine—a contraption of nickel, ivory, brass rails, and quartz rods. This machine, resembling a bicycle yet unlike any you have seen, is the gateway to a new way of thinking about time.
H.G. Wells, a believer in progress and the possibilities of science, introduced the Time Machine, a device that could traverse this fourth dimension—time itself. His invention was not just a story but a new mode of thought, challenging the very way people understood past, present, and future. The Time Traveller, a figure with no name but infinite curiosity, invites his friends to reconsider their assumptions about reality.
This was a radical departure from centuries of thought. Until then, time was often seen as a universal, absolute flow, measured by clocks but otherwise mysterious. The idea that time could be traveled, that one could move forward or backward through moments as easily as walking across a room, was a fantasy that had never before been seriously entertained. Yet, in the late 1800s, with the rise of new scientific ideas and technological marvels like the bicycle and the telegraph, the cultural landscape was ripe for such a transformation.
Time travel became a metaphor for the rapid changes sweeping society—the dizzying pace of industry, the expanding horizons of knowledge, and the unsettling sense that history was no longer a fixed narrative but a landscape to explore.
Let us now journey deeper into the cultural and scientific currents that propelled time travel from fantasy to a subject of serious inquiry.
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Explore the fascinating journey of time travel from its imaginative origins to the cutting-edge scientific theories that challenge our understanding of reality.
Read articleDive deep into the mind-bending paradoxes of time travel and discover how science tries to resolve them.
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