It was two months before he touched a transformer or a capacitor and during that period he did nothing but try to answer the question, What is time? How could he overcome it or change its flow or whatever had to be done?
He read everything he could find on the subject from Dr. Cagliostro to Dr. Einstein without gaining much insight. Many a midnight, when his neck muscles ached from trying to hold up his throbbing head, he caught himself dreaming of grandmother's wonderful stories. And every time he forced himself furiously back to the books, but he couldn't stop the nostalgia entirely. It was in him.
Eventually, Edgar came to think of time as an infinite series through which the Universe was constantly expanding. Something like a set of stop-motion photos taken microseconds apart, each complete, the changes becoming apparent only when they are viewed in sequence. He was wrong, of course, but that was unimportant.
Time must therefore be a function of human motion and consciousness, Edgar reasoned, and that was important.
"That's it!" he exclaimed, and then apologized gracefully to the elderly gentleman glaring across the library table.
Now that he knew what his time machine must do, he could begin building, adapting circuits, experimenting. Obviously, consciousness could move forward through the series only; hence, consciousness must be completely suspended, as in death, to move back in time.
It required some heartbreaking months for Edgar to learn that brain waves couldn't be stopped, but that the simple trick of introducing random electrical noise suspended all the brain functions.
"Fudge!" cursed Edgar, thinking of the wasted time.
Only a man filled with the longing which obsessed Edgar could have found the aching perseverance and brain-wrenching ingenuity the job needed. Only a man driven by a terrible master that rode in his glands.