# Using a time machine to help just one person in the past **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [May 15, 2006, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/using-a-time-machine-to-help-just-one-person-in-the-past/356876 "2006-05-15T18:34:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2006, 8:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/using-a-time-machine-to-help-just-one-person-in-the-past/356876/81 "2006-05-19T20:30:57Z")
I’d join Hank Williams on that last car ride to Canton and see if I couldn’t talk some sense to him. 29 was way too young. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2006, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/using-a-time-machine-to-help-just-one-person-in-the-past/356876/82 "2006-05-19T21:14:04Z")
I’d bring a modern pulmonary specialist with me back to the late 1940s and cure George Orwell’s tuberculosis. A personal hero and intellectual idol of mine, and it would be fascinating to read his books and essays about political events from 1950 to, say, 1990. Oh, heck, we’re dreaming, how about right up to 2006! 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Ranchoth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ranchoth/32/1066_2.png) [@Ranchoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ranchoth)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2006, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/using-a-time-machine-to-help-just-one-person-in-the-past/356876/83 "2006-05-19T22:44:54Z")
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton] Or offer him a scholarship to an art school in New York. It might or might not make him a successful artist, but it gets him **out** of Germany, before he ever thinks of going into politics. [/QUOTE] He’d just end up becoming a [pulp scifi author.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Iron_Dream) ---
**Author:** ![Sevastopol](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/cdc98d/32.png) [@Sevastopol](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sevastopol)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2006, 2:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/using-a-time-machine-to-help-just-one-person-in-the-past/356876/84 "2006-05-20T02:38:11Z")
I’d have a few words with Christopher Marlowe about the company he’s keeping and advise him against taking lunch at the seamy alehouses of Deptford. ---
**Author:** ![Ranchoth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ranchoth/32/1066_2.png) [@Ranchoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ranchoth)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2006, 4:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/using-a-time-machine-to-help-just-one-person-in-the-past/356876/85 "2006-05-20T04:07:58Z")
I might indeed save Martin Luther King’s life… But, for the sake of variety, I’d want to do something screwy, like having some Nazi (Otto Skorzeny?) jump Ray at the last minute, before he could shoot. Just to mess with people’s heads. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Kythereia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/e8c25b/32.png) [@Kythereia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kythereia)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2006, 5:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/using-a-time-machine-to-help-just-one-person-in-the-past/356876/86 "2006-05-20T05:21:33Z")
[QUOTE=Sevastopol] I’d have a few words with Christopher Marlowe about the company he’s keeping and advise him against taking lunch at the seamy alehouses of Deptford. [/QUOTE] [You might need to do a bit more than that…](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Marlowe#Marlowe.27s_death) ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2006, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/using-a-time-machine-to-help-just-one-person-in-the-past/356876/87 "2006-05-20T14:39:04Z")
[QUOTE=Cartooniverse] I would have made sure that the fire never started in the Library of Alexandria. The nature of development of modern civilization was halted because the copies of many of the greatest writings of humankind to that point were taken to the Far East, and emerged back through into Europe many centuries later. The Dark Ages may not have been what they were, and modern worldwide civilzation may well have emerged in a different way and at a different time, if the philosophies and scientific advances of the lost Library were not burned up in that fire. Cartooniverse [/QUOTE] Better still, I’d go back a few centuries further and introduce the moveable-type printing press (baked clay letters would be good enough for a start), vegetable-pulp paper, and the sewn-sheet codex book. Then there would be so many copies of every book that burning one library, even the greatest in the world, wouldn’t be that big a setback. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2006, 2:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/using-a-time-machine-to-help-just-one-person-in-the-past/356876/88 "2006-05-20T14:40:48Z")
[QUOTE=Ranchoth] I might indeed save Martin Luther King’s life… But, for the sake of variety, I’d want to do something screwy, like having some Nazi (Otto Skorzeny?) jump Ray at the last minute, before he could shoot. Just to mess with people’s heads. 😃 [/QUOTE] Especially if he does it while riding on a dinosaur! 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2006, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/using-a-time-machine-to-help-just-one-person-in-the-past/356876/89 "2006-05-20T19:09:29Z")
[QUOTE=kaylasdad99] Yeah, that’ll work. How fast will the auctioneer have to talk to get past the point that this manuscript, purported to have been written four hhundred years ago, is on paper that bears all the signs of being no more thatn a couple of years old? [/QUOTE] Right after you pick up the manuscript from Will, you seal it in a lead box and bury it. Maybe under the flagstones of some church that you know has made it the past four centuries without being damaged by war or anything else and without being renovated. Then you hop to the present and dig it up. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2006, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/using-a-time-machine-to-help-just-one-person-in-the-past/356876/90 "2006-05-20T19:21:48Z")
[QUOTE=mobo85] Either that or I tell Walt Disney to quit smoking and see if I can get him to live past 65 to see where the company would go. Would Disney World be different if Walt lived to see it through in its early years? [/QUOTE] I doubt it, but EPCOT would be – Walt’s original concept for it was an arcology, not a theme park. [Epcot - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epcot#The_Planned_Community) When his successors finally decided they **did** want to be in the business of running a town after all, they built one along far more conventional lines. [Celebration, Florida - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celebration%2C_Florida) ---
**Author:** ![lissener](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lissener/32/6139_2.png) [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2006, 7:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/using-a-time-machine-to-help-just-one-person-in-the-past/356876/91 "2006-05-20T19:27:39Z")
And this is in CS because . . . ? ---
**Author:** ![Boulter\_s\_Canary](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e79b87/32.png) [@Boulter\_s\_Canary](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boulter_s_Canary)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2006, 9:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/using-a-time-machine-to-help-just-one-person-in-the-past/356876/92 "2006-05-20T21:29:22Z")
[QUOTE=Skald the Rhymer] Nice idea, but I wouldn’t trust it; I’d just shoot him. [/QUOTE] “Shoot the dictator and prevent the war? But the dictator is merely the tip of the whole festering boil of social pus from which dictators emerge; shoot one, and there’ll be another one along in a minute. Shoot him too? Why not shoot everyone and invade Poland?” - Terry Pratchett ---
**Author:** ![ivylass](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/9de053/32.png) [@ivylass](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ivylass)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2006, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/using-a-time-machine-to-help-just-one-person-in-the-past/356876/93 "2006-05-20T23:20:46Z")
“Hey, Mr. Ritter? May I call you John? Just a hunch, but can you call in sick today? Yeah, instead of going to the set of _Eight Simple Rules_, I’m going to drive you to the doctor and get you an EKG.”\* “Hello, is this the FBI? Yes, um, tomorrow, do you think you could have some extra security at the Boston airports, specifically Logan? Be on the lookout for some Arab men dressed in suits and carrying box cutters.” “Mr. Presley? Yes, your ex-wife hired me. For the sake of your daughter and your fans, I’m going to be your personal trainer after you get back from rehab. This is Suzy, your nutritionist. We’re going to cut back on those fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches for awhile.” \*Or is it EEG? Whichever one is for screening the heart. ---
**Author:** ![Critical1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/3e96dc/32.png) [@Critical1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Critical1)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2006, 4:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/using-a-time-machine-to-help-just-one-person-in-the-past/356876/94 "2006-05-21T04:39:38Z")
Gengis Khan, it would be really interesting to see what he could do with another 15 years, and if not him the Kublia Khan, they both died early and before they could quite finish off europe. you have to wonder what the world would be like today if they had managed that simple trick. ---
**Author:** ![OtakuLoki](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ac8455/32.png) [@OtakuLoki](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OtakuLoki)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2006, 6:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/using-a-time-machine-to-help-just-one-person-in-the-past/356876/95 "2006-05-21T06:20:54Z")
[QUOTE=Askia] I’d convince Shakespeare to write his autobiography, penned in his own hand, and then bring it back with me and settle all these suppositions about the Bard once and for all… … right after I auction off the original manuscript at Sotheby’s. eBay, schmeeBay. [/QUOTE] You are seriously underestimating the stubbornness of an academic with a theory if you think that would end the speculation about who Shakespeare really was… But you’d have your mint, so I don’t think you’d be too unhappy. I’d like to see what would happen if I could go and cure Heinlein’s consumption. It probably wouldn’t be quite the same as in Larry Niven’s “The Return of William Proxmire,” but it would be fun, nonetheless. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/using-a-time-machine-to-help-just-one-person-in-the-past/356876.md?page=4)