Bob Burns & restoring the Time Machine
In 1970, MGM held a public auction, and with several other famous movie props from Atlantis, The Lost Continent, and Forbidden Planet, the Time Machine was put on the block. It was missing the entire control panel. The special effects crew from Project Unlimited had to saw it off during post production of the film to do a few close up shots. The auctioneers for MGM contacted Tom Sherman, a special effects artist who said he’d be happy to reproduce the panel, if supplied with the blueprints, and given about a week. Well, there weren’t any blueprints, and he was given one day. The next day he turned in a facsimile of the original control panel. It was made out of wood with painted pie tins on the side and Christmas tree lights on top.

The Time Machine sold for around $10,000 along with the submarine from Atlantis, also a George Pal film. The man who bought them loaded them into the back of a moving van, to be used in a traveling sideshow. Bob Burns, a good friend of George Pal, was also at the auction, but couldn't afford to buy the Machine at that time. A while later, Bob tried to find out where the Time Machine ended up. George Pal once told him that someday he would own that machine, and he shouldn't give up hope. He found out the man who bought it at the auction had sold it, and for three years the search was filled with rumors, but no machine. Eventually, in 1974, two friends of Bob’s walked into a thrift shop in Orange County, California, and there it was. They told Bob that it wasn’t in the best condition and he found that to be an understatement. When he finally saw all the damage the Machine had sustained he got pretty depressed, but knew he had to have it anyway. The first problem was getting it from the thrift shop for a reasonable amount of money. When he finally got it, he really wasn’t sure it could be repaired. Luckily, he had a team of very talented volunteers with one thing in common, they loved that movie, so the work began.

The second problem was the damage. The pods were badly broken, because someone had put floodlights in them that melted the plastic. When they were removed they almost completely fell apart, so new molds had to be made and the plastic formed to fit. All the bars had to be taken off, the dings and dents banged out, stripped and repainted. The mechanism that held the disk was okay, which was a saving grace because that was the most important, as well as the most expensive part. It was called a worm gear and it really couldn’t be replaced without destroying the whole machine. A well hidden secret is that the worm gear is actually powered by a barbecue spit motor. The next thing to be taken care of was the control panel. It still had the control panel created in one day by Tom Sherman, so by simply making a schematic, along with the blueprints it was relatively easy. All the panel itself did was run the blinking lights, everything else such as the spinning disk, was done off stage. The chair was gone, but there was absolutely nothing wrong with the dish, and it has stayed untouched to this day.

Tom Sherman took over the recreation of the chair which probably was the most complicated problem. Even though they had a set of blueprints there was nothing left of the chair to work with, so along with Lynn Barker and Dorothy Fontana, he built the chair from scratch. They added detailing on the side by using some scroll work they’d found, and the rest they carved. Tom was an expert at antiquing so he took over the next stage. The final stage, upholstery, was completed by Mark Richards. He did this as a hobby and with the material Bob’s wife Kathy found, the chair was an exact match.

During one of Bob Burns’ famous Halloween shows, George Pal stopped by to see the Machine. He sat in it and acted like a big kid. He never got the chance to do this during production.

The Time Machine went on to be displayed at Magic Mountain in Disneyland, Mike Jittlov used it in his movie, The Wizard of Speed and Time. It also appeared in Back to the Future and Gremlins as well as Carl Sagan’s Cosmos.