Hector first appeared in a movie theater short feature (I miss short features) called “The
Minute and ½ Man” in 1959 where he goes back to the American Revolution and fouls
things up until the end when he scares away the Redcoats (reminiscent of the 1955 Casper
cartoon). I haven’t seen that first cartoon in which Hector travels by time machine, but
Hector later had TV escapades (his own show, starting 5 Oct 1963) visiting the likes of
Daniel Boone and inventing the telephone in 1876, all without a time machine in the ones I
saw. There was also a children’s book (which had no time travel), a Dell spin-off comic
book (Mar 1964), and a Colorforms’ play set (which provided the image to the top-left).