John Bentley's time machine

John Bentley's time machine was a unique space-time vessel built by the human scientist John Bentley in 1980 after he accidentally discovered the secret of time travel while experimenting with a small X-ray machine.

Its construction took weeks. It appeared as a tall, rectangular cabinet, its interior only large enough for a single pilot sitting on a small padded stool, with the controls on a panel on the wall in front of him. It travelled through the Time Vortex or something very like it, but the human pilot "blacked out" while it was in flight, only waking when the ship rematerialised. Bentley was able to program his destination date with some precision, but did not necessarily have control of where on Earth the machine would land.

After taking a trip backwards through history, looking for a more peaceful era than his own Atomic Age, an unsuccessful Bentley returned to 1980, having realised that all past eras of human history had their own evils that weighed down on the locals just as much as the atomic threat did John and his countrymen. The Fourth Doctor would later become aware of his "time tale". (COMIC: Dr. Who's Time Tales)