Flux Capacitor

The flux capacitor was the core component of Doctor Emmett Brown's time traveling DeLorean time machine and the following Jules Verne Train. Brown stated that the flux capacitor "is what makes time travel possible."

It consisted of a box with three small, flashing incandescent lamps arranged as a "Y", located above and behind the passenger's seat of the time machine. As the car neared 88 miles per hour, the light of the flux capacitor pulsed faster until it had a steady stream of light, which one was not supposed to look at as indicated by the Dymo warning label placed across the glass panel. The stainless steel body of the DeLorean also had a beneficial effect on the "flux dispersal" as the capacitor activated, although Doc was interrupted before he could finish explaining it fully. Accessing the flux capacitor safely required disconnection of the capacitor drive, as the Dymo warning label at the top of the unit pointed out.

On November 5, 1955, Emmett Brown came up with the idea of the flux capacitor after slipping and bumping his head while standing on his toilet to hang a clock. The idea came to him in a vision he had after being knocked out. He drew an inverted Y-shape with wires and stated "flux compression". He also performed some mild calculations on the paper.

In order to travel through time, the vehicle integrated with the flux capacitor needed to be traveling at 88 mph (140.8 km/h), and required 1.21 gigawatts of power (1,210,000,000 watts), originally supplied by a plutonium-powered nuclear reactor. However, for the time machine's return trip (from 1955 back to 1985), plutonium was not available, so a lightning rod was connected directly into the flux capacitor and was used while the vehicle sustained 88 mph. Plutonium was used once again for a trip forward in time at least 30 years, and at some point thereafter the plutonium reactor was replaced by a "Mr. Fusion" home energy generator from the future that was fueled by extracting hydrogen atoms from garbage.