VIDEO of it working (well it doesn't time travel, but it does do things ) [link] 18th/19th Century + Contact (1997)For my time machine project, I had two main designs I wanted to incorporate into the project. First was an object that immediately came to my mind when I read the brief, and worked perfectly for the scientific explanation of my time machine. It is an object inspired by the film called Contact (1997). In this film, a huge machine formed out of 3 giant rings was used to create a wormhole and travel through space. I fell in love with the rapidly spinning rings, and decided I will make them in my project.Then I went to science and history museum, to find out where the idea of rings inside rings came from. So I found out that start of this device must be armillary spheres, which is a model of objects in sky (celestial sphere), it is used as a map of constellations. Then I found out about Gyroscopes, which were actually moving rings each inside the other. I also found out about multi-axis chairs and Aerotrim (devices used for physical and space astronauts training). So an actual person stepped inside the rings and spin with the rings. I like this idea and first thought I will make just a ring based model, where somebody steps in the middle and can time travel. However, when I went to Science Museum, I discovered the exhibition called Science in the 18th century. I really like what I saw, and there was this Marine Chronometer in a simple modest box, which I liked very much because of its modesty and simplicity from the outside but complicated mechanism of a clock in the inside. I knew I wanted to use this concept. I thought if something is a time traveller’s machine or device, it has to be reasonably compact and convenient, and sort of secretly from the outside, so others don’t expect it to be a time machine. So this box in sizes about 20x20x20 seemed perfect instrument (device) for time traveler. Of course I wanted to make it my own (it had to be a bit bigger to fit in all the mechanisms I wanted to use). I decided to keep the old looks, and brass metal and aluminum parts, and definitely the clock.Then I thought that I need something to work as the actual portal/wormhole/ black hole creator, inside the box, that would drag the person and the box itself inwards to disappear and time travel. Because as I read a lot of speculative materials about time travel , the most common way of doing that, would be by using space and time alternating things( such as gravity and speed of light), then I remembered about the rings, that initially worked as a massive gravity producers. When they spun, they created an incredibly strong gravity in the center of the rings, thus when approaching speed of light, created such a strong density of gravitational force that it created a black hole, or as in this case for time travel a wormhole.So that was settled, I needed to create this 18th century box with 18th century scientific looking devices inside, from whom one must be set of rings each of whom inside the other.Later on I added a steam governor, because it just fascinated me in the museum and I though it perfectly represents steam engine century and style. Also I added a small steering wheel, in honor of the original boxes origins which is Maritime. A clock, obviously to show in which direction the person is traveling and how fast. A compass ,to show that while that machine is working the poles of earth disappear, and the traveler is no longer located in the normal space. A Celestial map to help the traveler orientate while traveling between time and space. And a sheet of engineers notes in Latin, describing how the machine works. Three switches to turn on or off the parts of the device.More details and pictures at [link] Please ask questions if any.