Who first thought of the concept of time travel ?

Question

I know H G wells wrote 'The Time Machine', but was this something that was discussed, perhaps, among Wells' circle of friends before he wrote the book ?
Did anyone else write about this concept before Wells ?

Answer 1

Origins of the concept
There is no widespread agreement on what should qualify as the first time travel story, since a number of early stories feature elements suggestive of time travel but are nevertheless somewhat ambiguous. For example, Memoirs of the Twentieth Century (1733) by Samuel Madden is mainly a series of letters from English ambassadors in various countries to the British "Lord High Treasurer", along with a few replies from the British foreign office, all purportedly written in 1997 and 1998 and describing the conditions of that era. However, the framing story is that these letters were actual documents given to the narrator by his guardian angel one night in 1728; for this reason, Paul Alkon suggests in his book Origins of Futuristic Fiction that "the first time-traveler in English literature is a guardian angel who returns with state documents from 1998 to the year 1728", although the book does not explicitly show how the angel obtained these documents. Alkon later qualifies this by writing "It would be stretching our generosity to praise Madden for being the first to show a traveler arriving from the future", but also says that Madden "deserves recognition as the first to toy with the rich idea of time-travel in the form of an artifact sent backwards from the future to be discovered in the present."

In the science fiction anthology Far Boundaries (1951), the editor August Derleth identifies the short story "Missing One's Coach: An Anachronism", written for the Dublin Literary Magazine by an anonymous author in 1838, as a very early time travel story. In this story, the narrator is waiting under a tree to be picked up by a coach which will take him out of Newcastle, when he suddenly finds himself transported back over a thousand years, where he encounters the Venerable Bede in a monastery, and gives him somewhat ironic explanations of the developments of the coming centuries. It is never entirely clear whether these events actually occurred or were merely a dream—the narrator says that when he initially found a comfortable-looking spot in the roots of the tree, he sat down, "and as my sceptical reader will tell me, nodded and slept", but then says that he is "resolved not to admit" this explanation. A number of dreamlike elements of the story may suggest otherwise to the reader, such as the fact that none of the members of the monastery seem to be able to see him at first, and the abrupt ending where Bede has been delayed talking to the narrator and so the other monks burst in thinking that some harm has come to him, and suddenly the narrator finds himself back under the tree in the present (August of 1837), with his coach having just passed his spot on the road, leaving him stranded in Newcastle for another night.

Charles Dickens' 1843 book A Christmas Carol is considered by some[2] to be one of the first depictions of time travel, as the main character, Ebenezer Scrooge, is transported to Christmases past, present and yet to come. These might be considered mere visions rather than actual time travel, though, since Scrooge only viewed each time period passively, unable to interact with them.

A clearer example of time travel is found in the popular 1861 book Paris avant les hommes (Paris before Men), published posthumously by the French botanist and geologist Pierre Boitard. In this story the main character is transported into the prehistoric past by the magic of a "lame demon", where he encounters such extinct animals as a Plesiosaur, as well as Boitard's imagined version of an apelike human ancestor, and is able to actively interact with some of them. Another clear early example of time travel in fiction is the short story The Clock That Went Backward by Edward Page Mitchell, which appeared in the New York Sun in 1881.

The first time travel story to feature time travel by means of a time machine was Enrique Gaspar y Rimbau's 1887 book El Anacronópete. This idea gained popularity with the H. G. Wells story The Time Machine, published in 1895 (preceded by a less influential story of time travel Wells wrote in 1888, titled The Chronic Argonauts), which also featured a time machine and which is often seen as an inspiration for all later science fiction stories featuring time travel.

Since that time, both science and fiction (see Time travel in fiction) have expanded on the concept of time travel, but whether it could be possible in reality is still an open question.

Answer 2

The idea of inconsistent time passage is very very old; there are many folk tales in which a traveller spends some time in 'the other realm', Tir-na-nog, the blessed land, whereever, and finds on return that a disproportionate time has passed in this realm (or dimension)
The Norse myths have characters taking part in events separated by milenia of time, as do aboriginal tales.
That's not the same as the free passage through time that Wells described, but I think that it illustrates that awareness of the fluidity of time goes back a long way in human culture.

Answer 3

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Answer 4

i wager once you commence messing round with the atomic makeup of an merchandise you under no circumstances know what would ensue. As a primary individual without medical heritage, it sounds outlandish to me yet who's to assert? an attractive element that you need to google: The Philadelphia try and Alfred Bielek some declare time shuttle already occurred in 1946...

Answer 5

H G Wells was known as the father of science fiction. I think he was the first to write about time travel (late 1800's) I personally haven't read anything about that subject that predates Wells.

Answer 6

It was me.

I basically did this by mugging a time traveller from the future last week, then going back in time to the stone ages and having the very first thought of time travel, thus inventing it.

If only they'd had patents then.

Answer 7

Mark Twain - "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court"

Answer 8

Maybe the guy who was found at Pompeii, wearing an outfit from the 19. century???!!!

Answer 9

Dr. Who.

Answer 10

God