Brain-wave analyzer

Doc wearing the device.

Doc answers the door with the machine on his head.

Marty tries on the device on his second trip to 1955.

The less antagonistic Biff, rummaging through Doc's lab equipment in 1986.

"My God. Do you know what this means? It means that this damn thing doesn't work at all!"

—Doc

The brain-wave analyzer was one of the inventions Emmett Brown created. It was intended to allow him to read someone else's thoughts.

History

When Marty McFly arrived at his house for the first time, Doc disconnected the machine from his dog Copernicus, and tested the machine on him as he arrived on his doorstep. It consisted of a helmet with a metal geodesic framework that held several cylindrical devices pointed at his head, with electrical wires that led from each of these devices to either a small helmet strapped to his dog's head, or to a suction cup that he stuck to Marty's forehead.

His first guess was that Marty had come "from a great distance". This was only partly true; Marty never left Hill Valley, but he did travel a great distance in time. His second guess that Marty was selling subscriptions to The Saturday Evening Post door-to-door. This was a common occupation, but also not entirely correct, as Marty had picked up a newspaper earlier that day to check when he was. After noticing that Marty appeared to be wearing a life preserver, Emmett made a wild guess that he was collecting donations for the Coast Guard Youth Auxiliary. He did not know that only a short time beforehand, when Lorraine's mother guessed that he was a sailor, Marty answered that he was a member of the Coast Guard. If this wasn't an amazing coincidence, then this device may have been Emmett's first invention that actually worked.

A week later, while Doc is reading the letter from his 1985 counterpart, Marty tries on the brain-wave analyzer helmet as he looks at the inventions in the lab.

At some later date, Doc Brown and his team at the Institute of Future Technology successfully demonstrated a much smaller version of the brain-wave analyzer that was used to read one's own thoughts and display them on a LED screen. The device worked by harnassing electro-magnetic impulses created by synapse-disponses from both the cerebral-malbestare. Mind waves were transmitted at a mind obitting rate into the circuitry, thus translating thoughts into written form-in other words, reading your mind. Apparently Doc had some initial doubts that his newer version of the brain-wave analyzer would work, as the message on the display was that of Doc pleading to the device to "Work, baby, work!".

In 1986, during the estate sell, Biff is seen wearing Doc's original brain-wave analyzer.

Appearances

• Back to the Future
• Back to the Future: The Story
• Back to the Future Part III
• Back to the Future: The Ride
• Back to the Future: The Animated Series
  • "Retired"
• Back to the Future: The Card Game (Background of Time Car v4)
• Back to the Future: The Game
  • Back to the Future: The Game - Episode 1: It's About Time
  • Back to the Future: The Game - Episode 4: Double Visions

Sources

• Back to the Future novelization (regarding name of invention)