Fun Fact: The original "Wayback Machine" from Jay Ward "Peabody and Sherman" segments (starting circa 1959 or so), has an interesting backstory, explained in the very first segment. Created by Mr. Peabody as a teaching device for his adopted boy Sherman, it originally was a fairly straightforward time machine that presented a couple of significant limitations. During an initial run, P&S of course realized that most people they visited were speaking other languages -- Peabody made an adjustment so that languages were no longer an issue (a plot device borrowed by Doctor Who for the TARDIS later). On their next test run,
P&S realized that they could not affect anything in the time periods they visited -- they were completely ignored. So Peabody made another adjustment so that they could fully interact, saying that this made it not a "way things were" machine but rather a "the way things should have been" machine. Each episode always ended with some awful pun. At my infamous Jay Ward Film Festival at UCLA back in the early 80s, Bill Scott admitted that he had written all those puns.
