Send one piece of technology back in time to freak people out and turn history on its ear

In My Humble Opinion
1

I was just gazing at my HTC Hero smartphone and idly wondering what would people make of it if it were somehow sent back in time to, say, just after World War II. I think anyone picking it up would be thoroughly mystified, even if the battery was dead; he or she woudn’t even be able to tell it was a communication device.

Imagine some college educated dude picks it up off a sidewalk in Times Square on October 22, 1946. “What is this thing? Some weird symbols, but also English letters, so it wasn’t dropped from a ‘flying saucer,’ heh heh. But what is this weird material it’s made of? Hold on, it looks like there’s kind of a coin slot at the top in the back, let’s take a penny and see if we can pry off – oh. That popped off rather easily. Nothing here but kind of a squarish black piece of . . . no, it’s not quite metal . . . hmm. And let’s take a look at that shiny silver sticker . . . why, it almost looks as if it . . .WHOAH!”

Of course if there were still some battery life and they managed to turn it on, my little cell phone would (to put it scientifically) freak their shit right out.

And it’s reasonable to suppose that the guy would pass it on to friends connected to Washington or the scientific community, and technology was far along enough that the boffins could understand the theory behind what they were seeing even if they had no idea how to reproduce it. But it would put enough ideas in their head, confirming some hypotheses and disproving others, and generally point them sufficiently in the right direction that technological development over the past 60 years would be vastly different.

But it would have to be just at that time. A few decades later and what they learn from the cell phone would probably just confirm what they already knew. A few decades earlier and it would be beyond even their theoretical understanding, and they’d probably just shrug and forget about it as a curiousity.

So, in order to change history and generally freak people out to maximum effect, I propose sending: (1) a smartphone back in time to: (2) immediately after World War II.

What do you propose?

ETA: And it can only be the item itself, no instructions. And no significant amounts of information, like a cache of Wikipedia saved in the smartphone’s browser. No extraneous information about the society that produced it.

2

This scenario was part of a few episodes of the underrated and cancelled-too-soon Journeyman, though it wasn’t WWII, it was the late 80s I think.

I’d like to send an HDTV back to 1920.

3

But they wouldn’t be able to see anything; probably not even static.

4

But they’d be able to study the tech.

5

In which we speculate about taking a MacBook Pro to 1983. Granted, that’s a lesser jump, and people at the destination time would have a better idea what they’d be dealing with.

6

I have a vague memory of reading that when the first ever hot air balloon landed in a field, a bunch of farmers stabbed it to death thinking it was an evil spirit. So I’m guessing it’d be pretty easy to freak out pre-Victorian people.

I’d probably send a Billy Bass to 1600, and watch a singing fish get burned for witchcraft

7

Wait, turn History on its ear?
I’d send the USS Missouri to the natives of Hispaniola, in 1492.

8

I don’t think y’all are understanding the premise of the thread. Sure, you could send the Missouri, with no people on it, back as a technological artifact. The natives wouldn’t know what to do with it. The Spaniards wouldn’t know what to do with it. It probably wouldn’t occur to either group to study the thing in depth: it’s either a piece of the landscape or a manifestation of the Devil. And with no one manning the thing it’d probably drift off to sea and sink in the first storm. Aside from mystifying a few dozen people who personally laid eyes on it, how would that turn history on its ear?

9

To tell the truth, I’m trying to figure out how you stab a balloon to death.

10

I’d send a globe back to the year 1300.

11

OK, in the spirit of the OP, and with an eye to changing history:
A microscope to Hippocrates.

12

Maybe I still don’t get it. Can I specify exactly who will find the technology? Or exactly where? I know that the OP said Times Square, but then said:

(1) a smartphone back in time to: (2) immediately after World War II.

Which might be found in Moscow or Johannesburg rather than Times Square. I ask because Little Nemo has a great idea, but in 1300 the globe would stand a good chance of being destroyed by the Church if it was found in Europe, but may have been useful if found elsewhere.

A microscope to Hippocrates is significant. A microscope to a rice farmer in the same era, not so much.

13

Remember the movie The Gods Must Be Crazy? We don’t necessarily have to come up with complicated geegaws and whatsits, even something machined or what we would consider a toy would work for this scenario.

I would give these guys a handful of laser pointers in 1940. Nothing fancy, just anything you could order from SkyMall or ThinkGeek. all the colors too; green, red, blue, it’ll be awesome.

I’ve been trying to think of a good time to send a Furby back to, but unless it was in the last 100 years it’d most likely just be burned as a witch.

14

Okay, I have here a multifunction calculator that cost me $6 at Staples. It should be pretty easy to figure out, since it’s got things like the square root symbol and that kind of stuff.

I’m sending it back in time to my father; it’s 1927, he’s a freshman in college, majoring in engineering, and I’m pretty sure he’ll be able to figure it out.

I don’t think it will change history, but it might change his calculus grade.

15

Send a horse and saddle, complete with stirrups, back to the neolithic or bronze age Mediterranean. Change world history utterly by jumping the superpowers directly into a feudal system, thus largely bypassing 2, 000 years of city states.

Construct a basic model telegraph system using a vinegar and copper/zinc battery. Send it back to Classical Greece. The technology is so simple that anybody even part way educated could readily construct large scale replicas. An ancient world with instantaneous communication. Woo hoo. Unlike the horse and saddle however, it’s not certain that people will see the obvious import of the toy.

16

OK, I’ll add (3) In Times Square. Not Los Alamos or Moscow or wherever because although the eggheads will be intrigued, the device will likely remained cloistered in some office, the man on the street won’t have his fair chance to freak out and it won’t revolutionize conventional thinking.

So, what device, when and roughly where? Say that we only have the ability to transport a device within a radius of a square mile or so.

17

Now you’re cooking with charcoal!

Right . . . like a toy steam engine. I get the impression that prior to the Enlightenment, even smart guys like the Ancient Greeks had a predisposition to viewing a wonder and saying, “Huh. How about that.” and not asking any further questions.

But the saddle is a good idea.

18

Send back a plow horse complete with horsecollar (and plow if that’s allowed; they may or may not be counted as one piece of technology) to the earliest era capable of building one. The horse collar has been credited with being a major factor in the collapse of slavery as an institution, since it lets horses outwork slaves for the same amount of food (and horses don’t rebel and slit their master’s throats). If we can be very specific about where it gets dropped, then drop it right on some farm where the farmer’s own plowhorse has recently died - that ensures that he’ll check it out.

19

The thing about the steam engine was that it was utterly useless. In a world with surplus population and multiple slaves, an inefficient engine that required more work to feed it with wood than it was actually capable of doing was as useless as a flyscreen on a submarine. Even if it had been able to be scaled up, nobody would have had any use for it. In the real world steam engines started as way to power pumps to keep mines dry, a task which the Greeks had little need for. Only after they were perfected at this task did they start to find wider uses.

In contrast a working telegraph has immediate uses. An ability to rapidly transmit a signal telling whether the Trojans or the Persians had won a battle was something the Greeks knew the value of only too well. So provided someone twigged to the idea of scaling the model up to transmit over miles rather than metres, the telegraph had immediate applications and represented immediate profit for the builders. But there is still a large question mark over whether they would see that potential. Things like that, or stirrups, seem blindingly obvious to use, but it’s hard to know whether someone from a previous culture would see it.

20

A moving-type hand printer, the kind sold as children’s toys, to whichever the dominant culture of the time happens to be, any time between about 500bC and 500aD, around the Mediterranean basin. Nowhere near as complex as the full-size items, but easy enough to figure out how to use it and how to make bigger ones, and they already knew ink.

Blake, the telegraph needs two telegraphs, a cable and a code.