THE TIME MACHINE is a science fiction novella by H. G. Wells,
published in 1895. Wells is generally credited with the popularization
of the concept of time travel by using a vehicle that allows an operator
to travel purposely and selectively forwards or backwards in time. The
term "time machine", coined by Wells, is now almost universally used to
refer to such a vehicle.
The book's protagonist is an English scientist and gentleman inventor
living in Richmond, Surrey, in Victorian England, and identified by a
narrator simply as the Time Traveller. The narrator recounts the
Traveller's lecture to his weekly dinner guests that time is simply a
fourth dimension, and his demonstration of a tabletop model machine for
travelling through it. He reveals that he has built a machine capable of
carrying a person through time, and returns at dinner the following week
to recount a remarkable tale, becoming the new narrator. . . (more on
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