Some fan sites collect screenshots. Don Coleman’s Time Machine Project builds the machine.
Visit The Time Machine Project
The site is devoted to the elaborate brass-and-red-vinyl time machine from George Pal’s 1960 MGM film adaptation of H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine.
Its pages trace the original prop after production, through the 1970 MGM auction, later ownership, restoration and appearances in other productions. The same physical machine later turned up in projects including Cosmos, Gremlins, The Wizard of Speed and Time and the 1992 documentary The Time Machine: The Journey Back.
But documenting the original was only the beginning.
Measure it, rebuild it, document everything
Coleman built full-size replicas.
The project pages show museum installations, models, components, photographs, research and construction details. A newer build log explains that he was allowed to take extensive measurements from the original machine in Bob and Kathy Burns’ home, giving later replicas a much firmer physical reference.
The 2025 build pages break the machine into practical sections: base, chair, console, dish, feet, engine housing and rails. One page details the layered plywood base, templates, routing profiles, stain and shellac needed to recreate the look of the film prop.
The site credits itself as dating to 1999, and its long update history is part of the attraction. It covers the 2002 remake when that film was still future news, records old exhibitions and museums, and continues into current replica construction decades later.
For film-prop researchers, that continuity is difficult to replace. Measurements, ownership stories, restoration photographs and builder observations are exactly the details that disappear when fandom moves entirely onto social platforms.
This site was found in CacheRat’s broader Ancient Web research corpus.
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The Time Machine Project is what an old fan site looks like after the fan acquires routers, brass parts, measurements from the real prop and absolutely no intention of calming down.