It was only useful for sending objects into the future, as sending an object even a few minutes into the past caused a buildup of flux energy. If an object was sent any further back than that, the arrival of the object would overheat the capacitor and start an electrical fire. The invention of the temporal field capacitor was a necessary step towards the invention of the flux capacitor, which was the device that made time travel possible, as it solved the problem of the excess flux energy when traveling to the past.