Cerebro - History of The Device

History of The Device

Originally, Cerebro was a device similar to a computer that was built into a desk in Xavier's office. This early version of Cerebro operated on punched cards, and did not require a user (telepathic or otherwise) to interface with it. A prototype version of Cerebro named Cyberno was used by Xavier to track down Cyclops in the "Origins of the X-Men" back-up story in X-Men Volume 1 #40. In the first published appearance of Cerebro, X-Men Volume 1 #7, Professor X left the X-Men on a secret mission (to find Lucifer) and left Cerebro to the new team leader, Cyclops, who used it to keep track of known evil mutants and to find new evil mutants. The device also warned the X-Men of the impending threat posed by the non-mutant Juggernaut prior to that character's first appearance. Later, the device was upgraded to the larger and more familiar telepathy-based technology with its interface helmet.

When the human-Sentinel gestalt Bastion stole Cerebro from the X-Mansion, Cerebro was hybridized with Bastion's programming via nanotechnology. The resulting entity, a self-aware form of Cerebro, created two minions, Cerebrites Alpha and Beta, through which it would act without exposing itself. It also used its Danger Room-derived records of the powers of the X-Men and the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants to create its own team of imposter "X-Men" whose members possessed the combined powers of specific members of each of the two teams. Cerebro's goal was to put human beings in stasis so that mutants could inherit the Earth, and to this end it hunted down a group of synthetic children called the Mannites who possessed vast psychic powers. It was destroyed by the X-Men, with the help of Professor X and the Mannite named Nina.

More recently, following the example set by the X-Men films, Cerebro has been replaced by Cerebra (referred to as Cerebro's big sister), a machine the size of a small room in the basement of Xavier's School For Higher Learning. Though designed to resemble the movie version of Cerebro, Cerebra is much smaller than the films' version. It resembles a pod filled with a sparkling fog that condenses into representations of mental images.