The Time Machine is generally credited with the popularization of the concept of time travel by using a vehicle or device to travel purposely and selectively forward or backward through time. The term "time machine" was coined by Wells.
Set in then-present Victorian England, Wells focuses on a recount of the otherwise anonymous Time Traveller's journey into the far future. Time Machine is interpreted in modern times as a commentary on the increasing inequality and class divisions of Wells' era, which he projects as giving rise to two separate human species: the fair, childlike Eloi, and the savage, simian Morlocks, distant descendants of the contemporary upper and lower classes, respectively.