Take a modern invention back in time

In My Humble Opinion
81

can I take a book back? Because I think a book about off the grid living would be best. A book full of basic info about agriculture, nutrition, germ theory, herbology, first aid, etc.

If I can’t bring a book, I think I’d bring a concept back like the scientific method. Observe, form a hypothesis, make predictions based on the hypothesis, run a controlled experiment and detail the results. I think it wasn’t really until the time of Francis Bacon that the scientific method started to become more popular.

If I was limited to one invention, probably the printing press. It seems like it helped advance society and drastically increased the amount of written material when it came about in the 1400s, so I’d bring one back many centuries earlier.

82

What about a stirling engine? That is solar powered and would pre-industrial societies be able to manufacture those?

83

If the fire didn’t get too hot, and the cooling wasn’t rapid, then it might just have made them easier to bend, not harder.

84

The main barriers were economic and social, not technological. On small plots of land 4-field rotation doesn’t work because a) you just don’t produce enough yield from the wheat portion and b) common grazing rights mean other people’s cattle can eat your turnips. What was needed was for small plots to be rationalised into larger land holdings where you’d get enough production and could control access to land.

And this duly happened with Enclosure, by which a parliament that was by law restricted to land-holders passed laws that re-wrote property rights to the benefit of those same landholders. Enclosure simply allowed land-owners to annexe common land with minimal compensation. (Ultimately, a Good Thing despite the obvious issues with respect to property rights, government vs individual etc.).

Enclosure was happening in England as early as the beginning of the 17th century (and being protested against), but it only really got going in the 18th, very much hand in hand with the adoption of the four-field rotation system. So you could definitely bring the concept back quite a long way but what you need to make it work is a society where the land-owning elite have sufficient clout to annexe common land. They should be open to persuasion on this point, but it’s not necessarily as easy as “turn up on horseback and wave a sword at people”. Cross-class power dynamics are complex!

85

Skepticism is good, but I kid you not. I’m an experimental archaeologist who has spent a couple of decades researching and recreating ancient technologies. To date I have made fires with hand drills (my favorite), bow drills, cord drills, fire saws, fire pistons, flint and steel and flint and pyrites (actually marcasites).

No-one said anything about friction fire methods not being energy intensive; after all, my standard line in exhibition work is: even if no fire is achieved, at least one person is warm and toasty! But time intensive? No. With a good firemaking set twirling an ember takes 10 - 20 seconds, and the rest of the minute is easily enough to blow a tinder bundle into a flaming mass.

Keep in mind I’m NOT talking about a survival situation, where one finds oneself in the bush unprepared, with a cold night ahead. Ancient people had ready-made fire tools just like us, and they were kept as the prized possessions they are, dry and safe.

Good firemaking sets are infinitely quicker and easier to use than so-so sets. These work well, even when you wake up in the woods floor, with snow on the ground, and no source of warmth other than your body around. That being said, I have also made friction fires in the bush, cutting a couple of sticks as I go and having a twirl. But that requires a dry spell.

With the flint and steel the Romans were using, creating an ember takes around five seconds (and as many strikes with the iron), and the rest of the procedure is the same.

With a fire piston, creating an ember takes around 1 second, or a single push of the hand. Not all ancient firemaking technologies take up lots of energy, once you have the tool in your possession. None take up lots of time, if the tools are good and the firemaker on top of her game.

86

Just convince Britain to back Whittle’s jet research right from the beginning. However I agree that even having the idea of the Sabre would be a game-changer - critically the swept-back wings. (Did the Sabre have a “flying tail” like Glamorous Glennis?)

87

No, it had a fairly traditional swept-back tail.

The main thing, aside from the designs, is the production scheme. Just convincing the Brits to build their early design wouldn’t actually help much, as they needed to both refine that design, then build the production system to actually make the thing. Part of the genius of US production in the war was taking prototypes, breaking them down into small chunks, then building a production system to build the things in vast numbers. If you could take back the design AND the manufacturing and production scheme/system they would have a huge leg up when it came to building them. The detailed notes on building most of this still exist…at least, I’ve seen the ones for the Sherman in the archive, so I assume most of them exist. When we built the Sherman prototype and first production run in 1942 the tank was on par with most other tanks of its time. It had strengths and weaknesses. By the time it got to Europe in '44 it was a bit behind the curve. Had we built them in quantity in, oh, say '39, they would have easily been the best tank in the world at that time. Had we had the various modifications and upgrades already in the pipeline it could have stayed the best medium tank in the world. Same goes for the M26 Pershing. Build that in '42 or '43 in quantity and you have a tank that could easily rival the Tiger I, especially since you could have at last an order of magnitude more tanks than Germany had Tigers (I’d say a yearly production of 15,000 wasn’t unreasonable). Same goes for the AK-47…a weapon system we could easily crib (plus the irony factory makes me smile) and produce instead of the M1 Garand. For air power, I just always thought of the F86 Sabre as something that COULD have been built by the US in WWII had we had the designs and production system all worked out. I don’t think there is anything in the plane that was beyond not just the technology in the early '40’s but also the production capabilities. You might only be able to build a limited number of the things (maybe a few hundred a year), but couple that with a design of the P51 Mustang in its final form (and the production designs for the Merlin engine…or specifications right off the bat to buy them from the Brits along with later gen modifications we could give the Brits) and you’d have one of if not the best propeller fighter of the war along with a great jet fighter.

Just a cool thought experiment, and when I saw the OP that’s what came to mind.

88

Not sure if they had the material science to make a (modern, upgraded, and efficient) Stirling Engine that would be able to be produced such that it would work better than the alternatives (namely, an actual steam engine). That’s the thing…you could take back a modern Stirling Engine, and it would be a novelty unless they could produce it at a cost that it would be cheaper and able to compete with alternatives available. I wouldn’t try and take back modern technology such as solar cells or Stirling Engines using modern materials and precision build techniques, as they would just be curiosities. Same as you wouldn’t take back a modern Li-battery and expect them to put that into production to compete with the early cars. They couldn’t.

If you wanted to take something back you take something that they COULD produce and that has an obvious advantage. Maybe the Minie Ball to the Napoleonic era along with rifling techniques from the Civil War and the chemistry for better gun powder, or perhaps medical tech they could make using the chemistry and production techniques of their time. The various powers of that time COULD produce these things and there would be a pretty obvious benefit of reboring your standard smoothbore rifles and using Minie Ball ammo or medicines or practices…and it’s something they could do. Or take back plans for an upgrade to an invention they have already but aren’t using properly.

89

Again, do you have any examples of someone on video making a fire in less than a minute with one of these tools? I only ask because as a person who has never messed with this stuff, I’ve seen quite a lot of these techniques used by people who are supposedly experts and it absolutely is never as fast as you’re saying. I’m confused if that’s the case why it’s all but impossible to find video evidence of someone creating fire so quickly using nothing but sticks.

90

?

He didn’t say ‘nothing but sticks’, Martin. He spoke of tools.

91

Not going to get a video for each of these, but here is a guy making one with flint and steel…and it took him about 5 seconds, and that’s with him talking. Here is one using a fire piston (basically compressed air fire starter).

You can find basically all of those on YouTube that he’s listing. I have to admit when I’ve tried to use a fire bow or hand drill it’s never a couple of minute process, but I’m not an expert.

92

FWIW as examples:

Here is someone doing a hand drill (which requires two fairly large and specifically setup sticks, not just two someone would grab out of the woods in a few seconds):

Make a Hand-Drill Fire - YouTube

Here’s a guy doing a bow drill–he takes more than a minute just getting his tinder ready:

Bowdrill for Beginners - YouTube

Here’s a guy doing a cord drill and a pump drill

Primitive Technology: Cord drill and Pump drill - YouTube

He starts the cord drill around 2:38 in the video–he does actually get a fire in essentially a minute from that, but I would argue that looks nothing like what you claim–someone just grabbing a couple twigs, twirling them 1-2 times and suddenly sitting in front of a bonfire. The whole cord drill setup for example had to be created, relies on having a string and some sort of spindle stone that he’s carved a hole into, and the base stick the rotating stick rests in has had holes carved into them. I would not really describe this method as a “couple twigs” but more “a specifically pre-prepared fire device” in which case I’d note I too can start a fire by just slightly moving my fingers–with a Zippo lighter.

He starts using the pump drill he fashions around 7:10.

I’ve always found videos and techniques like this interesting, and maybe we just have different ways of describing them–but none of these techniques would I describe as “just twirling a couple twigs together”, these are tools that have to be created by someone who knows how to create them, they are not simply twigs you just grab off a tree in a few second, and then a few seconds later have a fire. They are primitive tools that require craftsmanship to make and in a survival situation would also require a little bit of time to get together and made–the string might not even be possible to find at all depending on where you were.

In his clarification post I think he made it obvious he was talking about specially crafted tools, his original post that raised my skepticism he said this:

A flint and steel might meet your personal definition of twirling a couple sticks, but not mine.

The fire piston again, is a specifically crafted tool. Like I said, I’m not someone who does this stuff but I’ve watched plenty of videos of it, and none of them in my mind match the claim that “I can twirl two sticks between my palms” and have a roaring fire in seconds. If he meant “specially crafted firemaking tools that would require a good while to source and craft” as his “sticks” then sure.

93

It meets what you quoted. The guy was going over various tools, and he mentioned both flint and steel and fire pistons, both of which I’ve seen used and both of which could start a fire in a few seconds (if everything works out). If you are talking about, literally, a couple of sticks (i.e. a fire drill or something equally primitive) then I suppose you COULD do that in a couple of minutes (I’d say 10 or more) in ideal conditions.

Well, flint and iron pyrite is something you don’t have to craft…merely find. And neither thing is all that hard to find. There are other substitutes for both of those things too, again if you know what to look for and where to look.

94

I mean I’m not talking about literally a couple of sticks–Toxylon is, if you had actually read the sequence of posts that lead to me saying that, I quoted what I was responding to–it was someone who specifically used that phrase “a couple sticks.” It shouldn’t be on me to train you on how to follow the conversation in a thread.

95

Ok, fair enough…I didn’t read the whole sequence. I’ll just drop out then.

96

Sorry if my tone came off as aggressive there, I think I’m just a little frustrated because I feel like the back and forth that lead to my statement was fairly straightforward and I had two people in rapid succession basically act like I was building some sort of strawman when I was quite honestly quoting a post verbatim.

97

No worries, I understand. I’m reading the thread on my phone and I only saw the last exchange so didn’t know the context. It’s something I complain about all the time, as often people don’t read through what I’m saying and only pick out the parts they want to respond to, so me doing it to you resonates. My apologies that I jumped in without reading the whole exchange. :slight_smile:

98

Of course, the problem with this idea and many others is it requires people to not be people, or rather governments to not be governments. Show up with plans for the M4, complete with production steps in 1937 and the government would lock you in St. Elizabeth’s before you could blink. The automatic assumption would be that it was a trap of some sort. More likely you couldn’t get anybody to listen to you or your ideas in the first place. Same goes for the AK-47. Try to get that adopted and the entire Army Establishment would land on you like an aforementioned Sherman. Hell, well into the war we had generals imposing their uniform requirements on troops that were idiotic in peacetime, much less in wartime. The Brits were opposed to semi-auto rifles because they though they caused dangerous wastes of ammunition, fer Ghu’s sake!

I think it would be necessary to start much smaller and a lot further back to affect significant change. Give the idea a chance to grow and evolve.

ETA: Add me to the list of people who can start a fire with sticks. The things you learn as an Anthro major. But again as mentioned, doing it in a survival situation is a whole different ball of wax. But I carry flint and steel in my pack at all times, just in case.

99

Agreed with caveats. I think it would depend on who you took the plans to. Take them to the US Government or the Army (this was pre-Defense Department days) or Navy and you are probably right. Myself, I’d take them…the notes, in the author’s own hand if possible…to the people who actually did do this. Perhaps with some history books on the subject, along with maybe some general history of events in '37 and onward. I think you could convince some of the people who were actually tapped once the war started, and several of them were already heavily involved in non-war production at the time. Convince some of them and their companies to really look at the plans and perhaps build a prototype or two and it might work. Once you have your foot in the door and aren’t in the nuthouse under heavy sedation you could trot out other things of course.

The key is going to be to take this to the correct people and to have plenty of preparation material that is specific to the people you are talking it to, along with some general history to ‘prove’ that you actually do know what the future will entail. With the butterfly effect, this is quickly going to spiral out of control as far as prediction goes, but generally, it should hang together long enough to get your foot in the door, at least that’s my take.

100

Or take your ideas to the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard a few years later and give them to a couple of engineers working there. Guys named Heinlein and de Camp, along with a punk kid named Isaac. :smiley: