Colonel Lomax, of the United States Army operating under the auspices of the Department of Defense, sought to find a scientist to invent a time machine. On October 24, 1962, the Cuban Missile Crisis had been going on for nearly ten days, and many people thought the world would end that week. Colonel Lomax and the retired Lieutenant General Leslie Groves went to Doc Brown's mansion to offer Emmett Brown a large sum of money to invent a time machine, in order to prevent it from ever happening. Emmett Brown had impressed Leslie Groves during his time working on the Manhattan Project, who felt that Emmett was the most likely person to be able to develop such a device.