Let’s say you are sent back in time to the year 1701.
How could you prove you were from this century? What could the average person do, or create, or show to prove the fact?
Hmm difficult one but here is what i would try :
-Recall my history lessons in high school and predict a future event with extreme accuracy (though this may get you killed for sorcery / witch craft).
-Recall some sort of design you remember from your origins
like a reliable clock for use at sea , though this may just make you seem intellegent and or may get you killed for sorcery and or witch craft.
You’d have to do something that didn’t make them think you were evil. Umm… the quality of your clothing may say something, and any kind of plastic might do it.
Fillings in your teeth.
How about that nifty time machine that took me to 1701?
Try handing over one of those new dollar bills(10’s, 20’s, 50’s, 100’s.) Its got the series year on it as well as the watermark and “official” strip in it.
Off to MPSIMS.
Zippers or velcro.
To my thinking, it would depend on who you are trying to prove it to. If you’re trying to prove it to the local people of that time, you have no hope. If however, you are trying to prove it to someone who was also from a different time, then maybe. Then things like fillings in your teeth or lack of tonsils or something like that may serve as emperical proof.
Hmmm…Do I get to go back wearing my clothes, or am I sent back bare-ass, a la “Terminator”. If I were sent back in time with my clothes on, including the stuff in my pockets, and including what’s in the pockets of the jacket that’s hanging on the back of the chair I’m sitting in, I’d have:
a.) A cell phone and a pager. Pretty useless from a practical sense, but I guess I could make them emit strange noises. (For a brief instant I actually thought “Well, I could page myself from the cell phone”…Duhhh Auto-:wally )
b.) A digital watch. Highly impressive to any ape-evolved life form from this particular backwater planet of an unimpressive yellow star in this unfashionable spiral arm of the Milky Way Galaxy. It has a date function but it doesn’t actually spell out the year, unfortunately, just says “TU 20” and, if you push enough buttons, “11”.
c.) An electronic calculator–solar powered, no less, so no worries about the battery running down. Even if they don’t know Arabic numerals yet, I could blow away the local scholars in a long-division contest. (Well, you said 1701, didn’t you, so we’re not talking real Connecticut Yankee territory here.) You do have to allow me to take my jacket for that one.
d.) A small keychain flashlight.
e.) Several ball point pens and mechanical pencils, a high-lighter, and a permanent marker, which aren’t all that stunning, but they beat a goose-quill, and should add to the general air of mystery. Also, a photo I.D. and an electronic door-card, assorted keys, a box-cutter (also on keychain), a tube of Chapstick, a change purse full of change, a wallet with all the things wallets normally contain, many of which have date imprints (though how recognizable “VALID THRU: 05/04” would be as a date to someone from 1701 is debateable, I guess; however, there are enough dated objects in there with references to dates in the 20th or 21st Centuries that I might be able to get the point across). And also a set of threads that would seem at least somewhat peculiar by 18th Century standards (“What, no codpiece?!?”), especially if they got a good look at my zipper. I also wear glasses.
I’d say all of that should at least be enough to convince everyone I’m a powerful sorceror (or some one from a far off and mysterious place with mucho strange technology, if we’re talking the Age of Enlightenement rather than the Dark Ages). Finally, I would have (again assuming I get to take the jacket) a 2002 pocket day-planner, with several calendrical representations of the year 2002, plus a few days from 2001 and 2003, highway maps of the United States, and much incomprehensible gobbledegook. (“These Americans from the 21st Century made the theologian Martin Luther their King, and they celebrate his birthday every year?”) Also, all of the coins in my change purse have dates on them.
No highly advanced semi-automatic firearms, no formulas for gunpowder (which, if I’m only going back to the 18th Century, would be old news anyway), no blueprints for a steam engine or the Wright Flyer, no pocket copy of the Encyclopedia Britannica, no personal force shield. But I bet I could wow a philosophe (and probably get lynched by the peasants).
A copy of today’s New York Times and a copy of the Declaration of Independence.
Forget the Dec. of Ind. I thought it said “Prove To Me You’re From This Country”, not Century. No one would probably believe that there would be a “United States” 75 years from now in 1701.
Well, besides today’s newspaper, to show that I was from the future, I would bring some clothes (I’m sure they didn’t have blue jeans and sneakers back then) and a videotape (No TV, no VCRs).
Maybe I should have phrased the original question better.
I was trying to think of a way of proving you were from a different century, but without whipping out a cell phone, vcr, copy of Penthouse or any other hard copy proofs.
In other words, I assume most of you, like myself, have no idea how to create a microchip from scratch, or to design a working engine out of iron ore, or any other such devices…or maybe I am wrong. I am trying to think of something you could do that would astound the best minds of that century - without cheating and bringing devices from this century…
How about singing a popular song that doesn’t exist in 1701?
~~I’d dress up like KISS and belt out a few tunes for them…
hhmmm… Maybe the fact that I am twenty years old and not married yet. The fact that I would be a woman who was in no way afraid of men, nor did I have any intenton of doing their bidding. There is aslo the fact that my teeth are in fabulous condition. I don’t really know what else I could do that wouldn’t involve bringing any nifty gadgets with me.
Hell, that could get you burned at the stake in this century.
How about explaining the grouping of the periodic table? Or tempered tuning for musical instruments?
milo
:eek:
I talk about shitblizzards. Dear gods.
going to my friendly neighborhood alchemist and borrowing his mercury tower to build some rudimentary vacuum tubes and continuing on to create a calculating device.
well, after collecting some lodestone and some slender copper/gold rods i could beat and draw into wire. need a power source, dontcha know. 
that or a (whatever the heck it is) flask, you know, that rudimentary battery thing with a huge voltage output.
or maybe even a (i can’t remeber what this is called, either). you know, that thing with two orbs, and the amber, and the fur, and the large blasts of static electricity? or maybe rip off some of ben franklin’s ideas. cause, you know, a “Static Shock Tube” would be pretty useful. and fun too! BRZZZZAP! 
oh, and i can’t remember… maybe dry ice and and/or liquid nitrogen and/or liquid oxygen?
i don’t think i could make superfluid helium with a mercury series (:D), but the rest could possibly be doable…