If you traveled back 350 years, what one item would you take with you to amaze the people you met?
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M$22 Answers
Well, anything I would bring back would effectively change everything. I mean, if you bring something back to amaze people, it's going to be some kind of technology like a car, or a computer, or things like that. You start giving people ideas of what's possible, and you speed up the invention process - assuming you show these things to the right people. The mere idea of electricity in 1660 would be beyond comprehension to most of the population, and the Industrial Revolution wasn't even about to kick in for another century or so! We're talking the very last remnants of the machine-less civilization, really.
I think - sidestepping the giant mess of changing history as we know it - the most beneficial and "wow"-worthy thing I could bring back to that time period would be a "The Way Things Work" book. If I brought back something really interesting and beneficial like a flashlight, it would be really amazing to people, but I wouldn't be able to explain how it works for the life of me. If I really wanted to "wow" and enlighten them, I'd bring back a manual of all our basic technology, and how it all works. A bit of "decoding" and Early Modern English translation/explanation would have to be applied, of course, but I think it would be the best way to show off what times are like in 2010.
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M$a natural resources map, that's the item that I will take with me. I will show them where gold, iron, or crude oil is located. That time, countries are trying to find natural resources. I would be a huge help for them, and I'll also be a very rich person because for next information that I will give them, they have to share the resources with me. at least 50:50.
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M$
I would take back a hang glider. Maybe I'd also bring a small engine to power one with enough gas to teach them the basics of how an engine works... but using the glider just by itself would show that we too can soar above the clouds!
*I just hope I wouldn't be burned at the stake for being a literal flying witch!
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M$
I'm not sure I would want to bring back the idea that there were these great underground deposits of oil, coal or uranium that could be mined and the energy extracted to wage war. I wouldn't want to usher in the industrial revolution 100 years earlier. I would like to actually leap frog over that era and even the present, to a post carbon/nonnuclear sustainable economy, where the air and water were never contaminated by CO2 or industrial/nuclear waste. This is the potential problem I see with @buddawiggi 's idea of the steam engine, which then led to the internal combustion engine, and the industrial revolution based on this reciprocating engine design based on the Carnot cycle.
What if we could bypass the industrial revolution as it took place with its dirty cities and foul air and water and went directly to electric motors, electric cars, electronic computing and an electric grid powered by say turbines fed by steam generated by solar collectors instead? The Tesla car does incorporate some of what I would want to show: it has electric motors, built in computers but how it would be powered after the battery died would still remain a mystery if I could only bring back the car and not anything else. I would want to bring back the idea of how it is to be powered too. I'm wondering now, if this is a chicken and egg kind of problem. Which comes first?
If I had a choice, I think I would want to bring back a solar energy farm that generates steam to power turbines which rotate the shafts of generators thus producing electricity. Seeing all this in place, as the picture below, would be quite an amazing site in 1660. It might then trigger the idea of the electric car, since an electric motor and electric generator are essentially reciprocals of each other: you put electricity into a motor and it rotates a shaft...or if you rotate the shaft, it generates electricity. So therefore, I would not need to bring back the electric car. I realize there are quite a few shortcomings to this idea as I also would have liked to bring back all the knowledge we have at present. If it was connected to one of those once secret Google data centers that they have been able to build into a shipping container, that would cinch it.
duenhsiyen
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M$
What an amazing idea, giving the past the seed of sustainability for them to grow from. :)
Maybe I could become like Nikola Tesla? Make a few tesla coils and throw lightening bolts from my hands to impress the people? Then onto more practical applications like making electromagnets, solenoids, then on to motors, communication devices such as the telegraph, loudspeakers. I assume the technology to make wire insulated with cloth was available in 1660.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_coil
And if I brought back all this stuff, I probably would be worshiped like a God, and actually change the course of history! But I was wondering, eventually, this would need repairs, so I would want to bring something that I could fix, including spare parts, or have the overall system be redundant, self-repairing if possible, fault tolerant etc.
Oh, good point - a system like that would be very complex and tough to maintain. Maybe you could cheat and bring back a "package" (system and maintenance crew included)! ;)
What would you do with the electricity in 1660? Even if it all didn't break down with no hope of spare parts or repair.
Tom would not in real time patent the steam engine until 1698 and Thomas Newcomen with the atmospheric steam engine a few years later so I would have a big "head of steam" start and probably turn the historical conquest tide of whichever nation or kingdom I decided to share my technology with.
John Fitch, James Watt and later Robert Fulton would not move civilization into the steamboat age until the mid to late 1700s and early 1800s so in the year 1660 I would be the King of the Seas... and those whom I chose to do business with would become the richest of the rich.
I would usher in under my control the Industrial Revolution a hundred + years early.
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M$
Would the steam engine work without modern metallurgy? Or just explode like many early experiments?
This question does have a few holes in it.
Firstly by taking "one technology" like a steamboat one would be truthfully taking several technologies with oneself not just one. And the question does not say that our minds would be "blanked" before we went so everything in our heads now would also be making the trip back to 1660. This allows for the wiggle room necessary for a "technology" like steamboats to be successfully brought back to 1660.
The jump ahead to modern steel would be an easy inevitability through reverse engineering and the likelihood of the modern blast furnace and the Bessemer process being tag a long technologies would be considerably high.
Boy, here I was just trying to educate the masses, and you roll in with your big business ideas! Now there's an interesting perspective on our personalities! ;)
Mechanical energy and later electricity was the driving force behind the industrial revolution and resulted in our current technological society. It all started with James Watt's steam engine from the 18th century. Note that taking this back 350 years would advance things by only about 100 years. We'd invent the internet in the late 1860s and have universal access in the early part of the 19th century.
The man on the moon would be around the same time as the start of the internet. If we follow the predictions on climate change, by 2010, the earth would be largely destroyed by global warming.
So in conclusion, don't take technology. Bring 50 kg of salt (worth their weight in silver at the time), a few seeds for exotic plants (such as potatoes in Europe at the time), grow a fortune by causing a revolution in food culture and live the good life in the past.
Interesting that most answers propose to take technology back. As an engineer, I should feel pleased.
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M$
I would definitely take back to the 17th century Tesla's alternating current generator and make electricity free for everyone just like he originally intended. You know, before all his investors ditched him for trying to make something free in the turn of the 20th century world market. Its relatively simple considering the potential for it. If Leonardo De Vinci can make submarines and tanks only a couple centuries into the Renaissance, there's gotta be someone in the Papal States crazy enough to invest in it and learn to reproduce it.
In reality, I'd probably be publicly lit on fire for being a witch while some clever bastard hoards my idea or short circuits it in holy water, but you never know if you never try. Plus, making electricity free is simple enough, but keeping it free is an entirely different playing field. Most cases its an entirely different game altogether.
Either way, when more Renaissance men from the actual Renaissance get a hold of the idea, people will no doubt start seeing some crazy new boomsticks on the battlefield. Keep in mind people are still lining up in rows in open fields to fight fully declared wars.
Plus the apocalypse scare of 1666 (notice 666) would culturally give somewhat of a biblical sense to whatever ridiculous inventions come about around this time. I'm sure the AC current would immediately be put into weapon designs considering the AC current is a weapon itself. It may be quite a bit longer than that before reliable, efficient AC current based weapons come around, but it would no doubt have that shock and awe effect psychologically.
Anyone going back in time want some free electricity for their machines just look me up around 1680 if I'm still alive. Just hope I found a way to measure Amps and Volts by then.
If you don't know who Nikola Tesla is, here is a drunken hippie to tell you all about him.
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M$
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M$
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M$My brain
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M$
Can't live without computers? I'm guessing more like internet access.
Gonna be hard to find in 1660.
yeah, garyallen? Not for the internet, for playing games and writing without hurting my fingers. i am hardly ever online. in fact, you are lucky to have caught me today. I was having my weekly internet go.
But to end all wars bring back an atom bomb. Have people come from all over to witness the bomb detonate. Tell all you will be watching from far away and this is how you will end any war between them.
It also wouldn't hurt to bring some gold and buy things like property in what are now expensive locations and get the family wealthy for the future.
Or a good Banking family could be started.
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M$
As I stated penicillan as it is grown from mold. This would save thousands of lives and have the World even more overpopulated 350 years later. But thiss is the one simple drug that really changed the World.
Knowledge and medicine are good ones (though it's more than one thing). With medicine, select the ones that are feasible to produce in a non-technological society.
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M$You can leave an optional "tip" with Mahalo's virtual currency, Mahalo Dollars. If you are asking a difficult question that might require some research, or if you'd like a wide variety of feedback, a higher tip often leads to more answers to your question.
M$You can leave an optional "tip" with Mahalo's virtual currency, Mahalo Dollars. If you are asking a difficult question that might require some research, or if you'd like a wide variety of feedback, a higher tip often leads to more answers to your question.
M$
You can leave an optional "tip" with Mahalo's virtual currency, Mahalo Dollars. If you are asking a difficult question that might require some research, or if you'd like a wide variety of feedback, a higher tip often leads to more answers to your question.
M$
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M$
It would have so many uses in 1660 and would have made their lives so much easier!
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M$-calculator for math and to help scientists
-Textbooks (inventions and stuff already there and to help out scientists to modernized faster)
-Music sheets of various artists and composer to have musical movement and entertain the audience with new beats, lyric, rhythm and/or sound.
Out of all the choices I could think of...I would bring the scientific calculator that is run by solar energy (sunlight). Why? All science involves math and if
i bring the calculator it would maybe speed things up by a whole lot.
my thoughts
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M$
Imagine going back in time, handing every home a box, and saying, "put your food in this box when you're not eating it, you won't get sick from eating it anymore." They won't even have to know why, (though an explanation would surely be nice). And maybe drop them a hint to leave some of their bread out to get moldy, because that helps with strep throat (that would blow their mind!)
For my second choice, I would bring back effective latex condoms and female birth control. This would prevent the spread of ST disease, decrease global poverty from having too many babies, and prevented unwanted births (maybe the ancestors of Hitler, Stalin, and Hussein would never have been born). The strain on our planet due to over population wouldn't even be an issue to the degree it is today.
I emphasize female birth control because there are still nations today, particularly in the middle east, that oppress women to archaic degrees. The introduction of female birth control would certainly be a step in the right direction for women to gain rights worldwide, and have stronger power and awareness over their bodies and lives.
P.S. And yes, I know that condoms were invented a long time ago, and made from animal intestines, but even animal cells in 2010 still have enough space between them for human sperm to breach. Thus, I mention effective latex condoms.
Footnotes:
1.) http://www.buzzle.com/articles/history-of-electricity-when-was-electricity-...
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M$
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M$
Then again...maybe it would give them cause to work faster. Yikes!
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M$
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M$
