 Footage of the exterior steps of the library was filmed several months after production had been completed . These steps can also be seen on the exterior of an Eloi public building in MGM 's 1960 version of The Time Machine . John Brahm was nominated for a Directors Guild award for his work on the episode . The book that Bemis was reading in the vault and that flips open when the bomb explodes is A History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus by Washington Irving . 
