Daniel Boone Davis

Daniel Boone Davis is Dan Davis’s full name and the signature by which he publicly claims the inventions he created after returning to 1970. The name connects the accomplished engineer of the future to the working inventor rebuilding his life in the past: it first appears as the identity behind patents he discovers decades later, then as a deliberate signature in the county clerk’s book before his marriage to Ricky. That recurrence makes authorship a matter of more than technical credit; it becomes one of the ways he establishes who he is across a life divided by time displacement and cold sleep.

Identity and Recognition

In 2000, while examining patent papers for machines that seemed uncannily close to his own designs, Dan found his name in the claims and descriptions. The first recognition came when he looked up the inventor of Drafting Dan and discovered the 1970 patent date. The device’s design and operation felt so much like his own technique that he wondered whether telepathy might exist; he initially imagined the inventor as a former teacher or colleague whose methods he had unconsciously absorbed. The mystery changed when the paperwork identified the inventor as D. B. Davis.

A second encounter made the connection still harder to dismiss. Looking over the papers for another clever machine, Dan again found D. B. Davis. Its keyboard chassis used an electric typewriter, with an IBM patent series credited in the drawing—a practical engineering choice that Dan admired. The two discoveries do not introduce a stranger whose work merely resembles his: the name on the claims is his own. Together, they reveal that inventions Dan encounters in the future bear the signature of the person he will become after returning to the past.

Authorship and the Machines

The recognition alters Dan’s understanding of Belle’s account of the company’s earlier dealings. He concludes that his Flexible Frank design had not been stolen, as she had claimed, but handed to another engineer for refinement before a patent application was filed in his name. He also distinguishes this from the Mannix deal: company records establish that the deal never went through, even though Belle had attributed its failure to the company’s inability to produce Flexible Frank as contracted. Dan’s newly recognized authorship therefore does not make every part of Belle’s story true; it gives him concrete grounds to separate the patent record from her explanation of the failed transaction.

Back in 1970, Dan acts on the technical knowledge and designs he already possesses. Because the old compass-and-T-square method is too slow, he builds Drafting Dan before rebuilding Flexible Frank. He develops the latter into Protean Pete, an all-purpose automaton capable of a wide range of human tasks when its Thorsen tubes are properly instructed. He expects later descendants of the general design to become specialized gadgets, but deliberately keeps the patent claims broad. His aim is not merely to produce drawings: he needs working models that can demonstrate their own practicality and the economy of their eventual production. The later discovery of D. B. Davis on the patent papers thus points back to a specific process of invention, construction, and planned commercial proof.

The Return and the Name in Public

The return to 1970 is not a secure homecoming. As the time-displacement device takes effect, Dan realizes that he does not want to proceed and does not know which way he is going or whether he can reach his destination. He has already discarded everything and, in his judgment at that moment, tormented an old man who had done him no harm. The journey ends abruptly in a short fall: he lands hard, and a voice asks where he has come from. The crisis makes his passage between times physical as well as chronological; he must arrive before he can begin the work that will later appear under his name.

Once he has cash and a place to work, he establishes a small loft and builds the machines. His claim to their authorship eventually becomes explicit in Yuma. Before marrying Ricky, he signs the county clerk’s book with his full name, Daniel Boone Davis, so that there can be no doubt which D. B. Davis designed the invention he calls his magnum opus. The carefully chosen signature joins the private fact of having made the machines to a public record. It also answers the earlier puzzle of the initials on the patent papers: the engineer whose work Dan recognized in the future is the man now signing his whole name in the past.

Time, Continuity, and Ending

Dan’s later reflections leave the relationship between the two periods deliberately unsettled. After he and Ricky are together, he notices that his second awakening, on 27 April 2001, should have been reported in the following morning’s Times. He finds his name, D. B. Davis, in the issue dated 28 April. The missed notice prompts him to wonder whether altering the setup sent him into a different universe, one in which Ricky and Pete were found, while imagining an alternative in which Pete was abandoned and Ricky remained subject to Belle’s vindictiveness. He then offers a more ordinary explanation: he may simply have been absorbed in work, missed the notice, and discarded the paper without reading it.

The full name therefore functions as a firm mark within a chronology Dan cannot wholly explain. On the patent documents it confirms that the future inventor is himself; in the Yuma record it lets him claim the invention in the past; in the later newspaper, it becomes evidence that raises—but does not settle—the possibility of divergent histories. Dan can sign the name with certainty even when he cannot say with certainty which universe contains the life he has made. The novel uses that contrast to bind technical authorship to personal continuity: the signature persists across the temporal puzzle, while the meaning of the timeline remains open.