So you personally will do . . . what exactly? Drawing on nothing but your own memory and your powers of persuasion, introduce both arabic numerals and fiat currency in the space of one year, with results immediately forthcoming? Implementation details, please.
The most useful or revolutionary invention you *personally* can bring back in time to the primitives
One of the things I love about that book is the way Martin Padway does NOT “invent” gunpowder, despite his persistence in re-inventing paper and other crafts. I strongly suspect that most people, trying to come up with it, won’t get it to work. Getting sulfer isn’t as easy as it sounds, and I suspect most people will end up producing something other than what threy intend when they try to get sodium or potassium nitrate. And, of course, the proportions (which are nowheree near equal) have to be correct.
I had friends who tried to make gunpowder from scratch back in high school. They failed miserably.
Hence part of the superiority of nitrocellulose. You only need equal parts sulphuric and nitric acids (or oil of vitriol and aqua fortis, to the alchemist) and relatively pure cellulose (like cotton balls), no fiddly relative proportions (although even if you did need proportions, I’d think my rusty stoichiometry is still good enough to get there over a whole year!)
I found that last night. Yes, it can be done. But I’d make gunpowder first. It will be much more difficult to gather the materials for making nitric acid and then producing nitrocellulose. Using more readily available materials I could make potassium nitrate, then gunpowder and simple weapons. Following that it should be much easier to convince someone to expend the resources to make nitric acid and then nitrocellulose.
What I came in to post. A time traveller has discovered scientific theory for your civilisation! They could then develop biology and steam power.
For Rome, the stirrup. Its benefits to the Roman equites will soon become obvious.
For the Middle Ages, probably modern knowledge of sanitation, medicine and nutrition.
What about cartography? I’m fairly sure I could sketch out an accurate map of the globe (better than Ptolemy at least).
Well, per the OP, I can’t bring an item, just my knowledge. I’m gonna arrive like Arnold in the Terminator movies. Now why that can’t include a 1911 to help me persuade seems a bit harsh. Let’s face it, Arnold was a machine 100 times the size. But, what the hey. Yes. My own powers of persuasion. Which are damn fine. So I’m bringing lawyers, puns and money.
I need details of implementation here.
Let’s say you head back to medieval Germany England to teach people to wash their hands before doing medical procedures. Let’s say you even get a head start by being a doctor.
First, you have to attract patients and build a practice, all while supporting yourself and keeping your house, which in medieval times was a pain in the butt even if you weren’t a quack who was always spouting off about their bizarre obsession with water.
Then comes your practice. To begin with, you are going to need to clean your water since medieval water supplies were almost certainly filthy, and that probably means boiling it. Boiling water takes a lot of energy, so now you are spending a solid chunk of cash on wood. Heck, getting all of that water is probably an issue, and you’ll need to pay someone to be constantly going to the well or fountain. With these extra costs, our practice is going to have to be much more expensive than the surrounding practices, which is going to cut into your patient load. Not to mention that it will be smoky and unpleasant.
So you are washing your hands, you should see outstanding improvements in your patients, right? I’d guess probably not. At this point, so much shit is getting people sick that eliminating one vector may not be making a particularly noticeable improvement. Your patients are still going to be dropping like flies. People may even agree that there is something to your hand washing thing, but given the conditions it may not be considered a priority.
Good ideas are a dime a dozen. It’s all about implementation.
While it wasn’t known as penicillin back then, it was known for quite a while (ancient Greece, around the same time as the Romans), that moldy bread and even soil could treat infections, the caveat of course being that the mold wasn’t always the right kind; then again, there is no reason why they could save and propagate the mold once they found some that was effective (penicillin also kills off any competing molds or bacteria, the reason in the first place it produces antibiotics).
That’s why I’d go with gunpowder. Easy to implement. You need some cloth and a metal pot, and the rest of the materials you could gather for yourself (sulfer may not be easy to find depending on when and where you are, but you could leave it out to make a mixture which will demonstrate your point). Once you can demonstrate an ability to do something useful, you can introduce all sorts of more complex technologies and you won’t have the big problem of convincing others to provide you with resources.
Interesting, I didn’t know that. Thanks!
The base ingredients are *the exact same *- sulphur and saltpetre (no carbon needed so actually simpler, in fact). Sulphur + saltpetre -> sulphuric acid. Sulphuric acid + saltpetre -> Nitric acid.
But anyway, the OP said:
“Any material or resource that can reasonably be found within that era and that time frame will be provided to you” and aqua fortis as-is is a reasonable resource for the Middle Ages.
For Rome, you’d need to make your own, but you have a whole year.
I contend that guncotton is a better use of one’s time than gunpowder - 4 times the power, for less than 4 times the effort. I admit it’s more of a win in the Middle Ages scenario than the Roman one because they will already be familiar with gunpowder, so the idea of superior guns, cannons and rock blasting would be more obvious to them from the get-go.
That’s kind of akin to fighting the hypothetical - the OP specifies that you get available resources for the asking.
Regarding penicillin - I suspect it’s a non-starter due to time constraints and difficulties in implementation. It took about 3 years for Florey and his team to develop the strain discovered by Fleming into a useable medication - this was using state-of-the-art technology (for the 1940s), a team of specialists well-trained in their fields, and the significant incentive that it would be enormously useful to the ongoing war effort. This is probably also the reason why penicillin lay more or less “fallow” from its original discovery in 1917 for more than twenty years. It was just a bitch to work with. So while you may be able to get some use out of it in an “occasionally mouldy bread is kind of useful but we can’t predict exactly when” kind of way, you certainly wouldn’t get anything like modern effectiveness out of it.
A phased plasma rifle in a 40 watt range.
Failing that, teaching people that contracting Cowpox will make them immune to Smallpox might be relatively easy to implement
Not to derail the thread, but since there are some people knowledgeable about this here – why do I never see penicillin these days? I can’t recall ever being prescribed penicillin for an infection, nor have I heard of anyone else doing so either. The go-to antibiotic for everyone in my family always seems to be amoxicillin.
Ok, I wasn’t paying attention. I concur with your opinion, nitrocellulose it is.
Amoxicillin is a derivative (semi-synthetic, modified form of natural penicillin) of penicillin which is more effective than the original penicillin, which is mainly effective against gram-positive bacteria while amoxicillin targets gram-negative bacteria as well (or is more effective).
If I can choose a different area, I’ll take basic metallurgy to the North American Natives of the Northern Minnesota and Michigan area. There’s enough Iron, Copper, Lead and the like in this area to build an empire. (Northern Minnesota still produces something like 80-90% of US output of Iron)
Since I already know how to make gunpowder and about basic sanitation, how to make paper, those come along for the ride. Being since the Paper Birch is native to the area, won’t be much of a problem on that end.
If I can avoid the whole being killed thing, or dying of a disease, I can build a Kingdom that will echo through the ages.
A 1920s-style death ray.