Wayback Machine (Peabody's Improbable History)

"WABAC machine" redirects here. For the Internet archive tool, see Wayback Machine.

Sherman (left) and Mr. Peabody (right) enter the Wayback machine ca. 1960 to witness another time and place in history.

The Wayback Machine or WABAC Machine is a fictional time machine and plot device from an American cartoon television series in the 1960s called The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends. Each episode of the cartoon series included a short segment "Peabody's Improbable History" in which the Wayback Machine was used by the segment's main characters, Mr. Peabody and Sherman, to travel back in time to visit important events in human history. The term has acquired popular or idiomatic usage as a way to introduce events or things from the past.

The Wayback Machine of the Internet Archive was named after the Wayback machine from the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon.

Peabody's Improbable History

The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends was a popular American television cartoon series from the 1960s.[1] Each half-hour cartoon episode included a short segment called "Peabody's Improbable History", with main characters Mr. Peabody, a genius, polymath, and bow tie-wearing beagle, and Sherman, his adopted pet boy. The segment was conceived and created by Ted Key.[2][3] In each episode Mr. Peabody and Sherman would use their Wayback Machine to travel back in time to visit important historical events.[4] The machine was invented by Mister Peabody as a birthday gift for Sherman. By enabling them to visit famous historical people or events, the Wayback provided educational adventures for Sherman.[5]

At the beginning of the cartoon segment, at the request of Mr. Peabody ("Sherman, set the Wayback machine to..."), Sherman would set the Wayback controls to a time and place of historical importance, and by walking through a door in the Wayback machine, they would be instantly transported there. Examples of people or historical situations visited are the Marquess of Queensberry[6] and the rules of boxing, the imprisonment and memoirs of Casanova,[7] Jim Bowie and the Bowie knife,[8] and the "Charge of the Light Brigade".[9] During such visits, the historical figures and situations encountered are always distorted in some crucial way. The main focus of Mr. Peabody and Sherman's adventures is thus the restoration of historical events to their proper course, albeit in a characteristically frivolous and anachronistic way. The machine apparently later returned Mr. Peabody and Sherman to the present, although the return trip was never shown. The segment traditionally ended with a bad pun.[10][3][11]

Either of the names Wayback or WABAC are in common usage, with the term "WAYBACK" explicitly indicated during the segment in which Mr. Peabody and Sherman visit the "Charge of the Light Brigade". The precise meaning of the acronym WABAC is unknown. According to Gerard Baldwin, one of the show's directors, the name "WABAC" is a reference to the UNIVAC I.[12] Mid-century, large-sized computers often had names that ended in "AC" (generally for "Automatic/Analogue Computer" or similar), such as ENIAC or UNIVAC. The term "Wayback" suggests the idomatic expression "way back [in some former time]".[13]

The concept or term "Wayback machine" has been adopted in popular usage as a convenient way to introduce issues or events of the past,[3][14] often employing the original line "Sherman, set the Wayback machine to...". For example, this introduction was used by the character Kevin Flynn in the film Tron.[15] Another example occurred in a 1995 episode of the television show NewsRadio in which station owner Jimmy James (Stephen Root) says: "Dave, don't mess with a man with a Wayback Machine. I can make it so you were never born".[16] As in the original cartoon, the Wayback Machine is invoked to suggest the audience follow the narrator back to the past. Frequently such visits to the past are trips of nostalgia, remembering times, places, or things of the not-so-distant past.[17][18][19][20][21][22]

The Wayback Machine of the Internet Archive, a digital archive of all past web pages of the internet, was named after Peabody and Sherman's Wayback.[23][24] With it, users can revisit web pages that have existed at any period in the past.

Mr. Peabody and Sherman film (2014)

Further information: Mr. Peabody & Sherman

An animated film based on the original Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon entitled Mr. Peabody & Sherman was released by the movie studio DreamWorks Animation on March 7, 2014.[25][26] The WABAC machine was a central element to the plot. In the movie, the acronym WABAC was revealed to stand for Wavelength Acceleration Bidirectional Asynchronous Controller.

References

  1. ^ Scott, Keith (2001). The Moose That Roared: The Story of Jay Ward, Bill Scott, a Flying Squirrel, and a Talking Moose. New York: St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0-312-28383-0.
  2. ^ Weber, Bruce. "Ted Key, 95, Creator of 'Hazel' Cartoon, Is Dead", The New York Times, May 8, 2008
  3. ^ a b c Markstein, Don. "Toonopedia: "Peabody's Improbable History"". Retrieved May 5, 2008.
  4. ^ Dunne, Michael (2001). Intertextual encounters in American fiction, film, and popular culture. Popular Press. p. 157. ISBN 9780879728472.
  5. ^ "Mr. Peabody and Sherman". Youtube.com. October 1, 2012. Archived from the original on December 21, 2021. Retrieved October 1, 2012.
  6. ^ "Peabody's Improbably History: The Marquis of Queensbury". Youtube.com. August 26, 2013. Archived from the original on December 21, 2021. Retrieved August 26, 2013.
  7. ^ "Peabody's Improbably History: Casanova". Youtube.com. August 26, 2013. Archived from the original on December 21, 2021. Retrieved August 26, 2013.
  8. ^ "Peabody's Improbably History: Jim Bowie". Youtube.com. August 26, 2013. Archived from the original on December 21, 2021. Retrieved August 26, 2013.
  9. ^ "Peabody's Improbably History: Charge of the Light Brigade". Youtube.com. August 26, 2013. Archived from the original on December 21, 2021. Retrieved August 26, 2013.
  10. ^ Moraes, Frank (August 28, 2015). "Mr Peabody & Sherman". Frankly Curious. Retrieved November 1, 2024.
  11. ^ An example pun from the episode "Charge of the Light Brigade": Mr. Peabody: Following the war the Crimeans borrowed a large sum of money from the British. Sherman: Don't tell me they didn't pay them back! Mr. Peabody: Well that goes without saying, Sherman. Everybody knows that Crimea doesn't pay!
  12. ^ Kahle, Brewster (April 24, 2009). "Wayback Machine comes to life in new home". Retrieved August 23, 2009. On another note, we got a nice letter from the last living director of the Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, Gerard Baldwin, because he read about the "fantastic project". Our Wayback Machine is a tribute to their more cleverly named "WABAC Machine" which in turn was a reference to the Univac. Sherman and Peabody live on.
  13. ^ Your Dictionary "Way-back"
  14. ^ Cambridge dictionary: Wayback machine
  15. ^ Steven Lisberger, Tron, screenplay, 1982: "FLYNN (CONT.) (sighs): 'Sherman, set the Wayback Machine for... oh, 1973'." The line as Jeff Bridges actually delivered it in the film reads, "Sherman, set the Wayback machine for... three years ago."
  16. ^ Memorable quotes for NewsRadio: Goofy Ball (1995) from the Internet Movie Database
  17. ^ Miller, Ernest (September 24, 2005). "Sherman, Set the Wayback Machine for Scientology". LawMeme. Yale Law School. Archived from the original (Blog) on April 24, 2006. Retrieved June 27, 2007.
  18. ^ Robinson, Eugene (September 5, 2006). "Who Set the Wayback Machine for 1939?". The Washington Post. Retrieved June 25, 2007.
  19. ^ Britt, Robert Roy (July 25, 2005). "The Wayback Machine? Nearby Solar System Looks Like Home". Space.com. Retrieved June 25, 2007.
  20. ^ Mallozzi, Vincent M. (April 6, 2007). "A Jukebox Is a Way-Back Machine With Black Vinyl Wings". The New York Times. Retrieved June 25, 2007.
  21. ^ Clark, Mike (April 12, 2004). "Wayback machine puts out plenty of time-travel movies". USA Today. Retrieved June 25, 2007.
  22. ^ Kurtz, Scott (May 11, 2005). "PvP – Player vs Player – Set the WABAC machine to Pac-Man". pvponline.com. Archived from the original on December 4, 2007. Retrieved May 11, 2005.
  23. ^ Green, Heather (February 28, 2002). "A Library as Big as the World". BusinessWeek. Archived from the original on June 1, 2002. Retrieved July 29, 2007.
  24. ^ Tong, Judy (September 8, 2002). "Responsible Party – Brewster Kahle; A Library Of the Web, On the Web". The New York Times. Archived from the original on February 20, 2011. Retrieved August 15, 2011.
  25. ^ McClintock, Pamela (June 11, 2012). "Stephen Colbert, Allison Janney Join Voice Cast of 'Mr. Peabody & Sherman'". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved August 26, 2013.
  26. ^ "Ty Burrell & Max Charles Take On Lead Roles in Dreamworks Animation's Mr. Peabody & Sherman in 2014" (Press release). DreamWorks Animation. PR Newswire. March 16, 2012. Archived from the original on March 19, 2012. Retrieved April 17, 2015.