Etymology

flux capacitor

Today it means: A fictional instrument required to operate a time machine, consisting of a rectangular-shaped compartment with three flashing Geissler-style tubes arranged in a "Y" configuration. Full definition →

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The story

First seen in The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension in 1984 and in the 1985 American science fiction film Back to the Future, directed by Robert Zemeckis, in which a DMC DeLorean vehicle is retrofitted with a flux capacitor to create a time travel device.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.