Time travel became popular as a literary device with HG Well’s The Time Machine – published in 1895, the same year that the Lumière Brothers made Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat. So time travel and cinema entered the public consciousness at the same time, and it has a long and fascinating history as a cinematic device. While rooted in science fiction, it has flitted around a variety of genres and even today filmmakers are exploring new ways to tell stories with it. Time travel is one of the most popular and interesting tropes in cinema and in this article we’ll look at how it’s developed through, well, time.

Infographic source: ilbosone