Jumping Jigowatts!
 

The circa 1975 branch library has a built-in clock that has worked just fine since being installed. It died last month, and the repair guy was unable to revive it.

The other day I noticed the clock through my glazed eyes and was surprised I hadn't noticed it before. I went over to the Librarians.

"Did anyone set that clock?"

"It's broken."

"I know. Did anyone set it to that time?"

"Not us. (looks up) It's not at the time when it stopped. I guess that's the time the repairman was working on it."

"Ah. Well, I noticed that the time on the clock is 10:04, which is the time the Clock Tower stops at in Back to the Future. You know, when lightning strikes it?"

The older librarian laughed at me, while the younger one quickly Googled it to make sure I was right.

I guess clock repairmen have few kicks. Setting broken clocks to 10:04 is one of them.

Jumping GIGAWatts! ;)

Cool beans...

So, CP, if you go back in time... don't talk to anyone's parents.
:D

I actually looked up the spelling in the full script I found online somewhere. Too lazy to search it up again. They spelled it with a J...

Oh, and for those of you that were there at USH, I also found the first draft of the script, where the time travel device is a refrigerator. :D

Actually, in the movie he actually does say "jigowatts" rather than "gigawatts." By some strange coincidence a local radio station played that clip this morning as part of a "battle of the genders" contest.

Actually, we looked it up last night after CoasterMatt's post, and apparently the "j" pronunciation of "gigawatts" is an alternate in the dictionary.

GD theorizes that it really was "gigawatts" but Christopher Lloyd pronounced it "jigowatts", and then they went back and rewrote the script to match it.

In the film's script the word "gigawatt" is spelt "jigowatt". Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis had been to a science seminar and the speaker had pronounced it "jigowatt".

When Robert Zemeckis was trying to sell the idea of this film, one of the companies he approached was Disney, who turned it down because they thought that the story of a mother falling in love with her son (albeit by a twist of time travel) was too risqué for a film under their banner. In fact, Disney was the only company to think the first was risqué. All other companies said that the film was not risqué enough, compared to other teen comedies at the time (e.g. Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982), Revenge of the Nerds (1984), etc).

Actually, to my surprise, most dictionaries I've looked in show "jigawatts" as the first pronunciation.

I won't be posting my bad taste meaning of jigawatt.

I can't imagine pronouncing it that way.

"Check it out, I got a new iPod!"
"How many jigs?"
"Oh, it's a 60 jig."